Rollercoaster Ride Down The Roads Not Taken
by FanofPnF ToxicWaste
Summary: Candace has seen it all this summer: aliens, time travel, teleportation, you name it. She's seen it all and is determined to bust it all, too. Until that Do-Over-Inator starts going a little topsy-turvy and being flung facefirst into a land beyond time brings her face to face with something she's never seen before (except in a mirror) - herself. A whole lot of them, actually.
1. Going Nowhere With You

_A/N: Toxic Waste: The commencement of a crossover over which more things cross than I'd even considered myself capable of writing at one point. But over those things did cross, all to wind up here, in this first chapter, which starts the whole thing off._

 _Thanks for reading - and I hope you enjoy!_

 _FanofPnF: Well, it's been a long time since I wrote a crossover story with someone - but it was certainly a lot of fun to do it again, and to really delve into all of the possibilities that are offered up by Candace's "rich internal life", as I believe Ferb once put it. As for you, the reader, I hope you'll enjoy it as much as we enjoyed writing it - just know that once you start, you're in it for the long haul._

* * *

 _Beep! Beep! Beep!_

 _I know what we're going to do today!_

 _Beep! Beep-_

Candace's hand clapped down on the button on the alarm clock as she bolted upright in the bed for only about the fiftieth time.

"So close last time," she muttered, throwing aside the bedcovers. "Oh, well. Today's the day! Well, I guess today's always been the day, but whatever."

She slid off bed and carefully danced around the three skates and skateboard scattered across her bedroom floor, stripping off her pajamas and chucking them at a wall before pulling her day-clothes over her head. The sooner she got past the now-monotonous morning routine, the sooner she could get to her ultimate goal: busting her brothers. And with infinite retries, not even the Mysterious Force would be able to keep up with her forever. Today was going to be the day she finally won - and if not today, then tomorrow, when it would be this morning again.

"I am so gonna get it right today!" she exclaimed aloud, sprinting down the stairs and through the living room into the kitchen. "I can feel it in my—"

And just like, she was suddenly stopped short at the sight of her parents. Just like the past fifty-odd loops, they were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast. Of course. Only this time there was... it was different? Blinking, she rubbed her eyes, trying to make sure her brain wasn't tricking her in some way. They were… face down in their bowls, eating the cereal and milk directly from the dishes, while making a huge mess in the process. What on earth had gotten into them?

Well, this – this was certainly new. And considering she'd lived this day for the past month and a half, the fact that anything was new was… weird. She'd gotten completely used to the same sequence of events every time long ago - within the first two or three weeks. The time loops hadn't stopped, had they? Not before she'd busted her brothers, they'd better not have. That wouldn't even be fair.

"Um, ever hear of a spoon?" she asked slowly, still trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

"Spoon?" Lawrence replied, glancing up at her. "Mm, no, can't say I have."

Candace frowned, but eventually shrugged it off. She still had busting to get to, and needed to hurry her parents through their morning, spoons or... no spoons, apparently. "Hey! I hear there's a new tiger habitat, dahhhling."

"Tiger?" Her father snorted slightly, almost laughing. Cereal and milk were really getting everywhere. It was a good thing that no one'd have to clean it up, wasn't it? "That's a funny sounding word."

"Oh, these teenagers and their slang." Linda remarked, pushing away from the table and standing up. "I'd better go run my errands. They're not gonna run themselves."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Something was very wrong here.

"Mom?" Candace hesitated, some of her excitement over the fresh busting opportunity fading. "What happened to your capri pants?"

"Capri pants? Now I think you're just messing with us." Linda picked up her purse and headed out the garage door without another word – acting as if everything was perfectly normal.

And yet, it wasn't. Not anymore.

Candace frowned again, and wasn't able to so easily it shrug it off again. "No spoons?" she muttered under her breath. "No tigers? No Capris?" She paused for a second, trying to come up with a reason that all this could be happening. Normally she'd blame her brothers for it, but just like the rest of the universe, Phineas and Ferb had been trapped in an endless time loop, repeating the same actions like a scratched record.

But if the entire universe was trapped in the time loop, then why had – why had things started changing all the sudden? With spoons – with tigers – with capri pants?

"Uh-oh, something's really going wrong." Even as she said the words, the full weight of their meaning settled on her. Time loops, they wouldn't do anything bad, would they?

She could still remember her musical number from the very first day of the loops – the first time around. And yes, she wouldn't have doubted that there might be some kind of consequence to this whole 'time loop' thing. And she still was sort of expecting something to happen. But she hadn't expected… this?

Things being removed from people's memory?

Ignoring her father, she hastily darted across the kitchen and jerked open the silverware drawer. Ah, there was no reason to panic. Knives, and forks, and the can opener and… that was it.

Her eyes widened as she realized what she was seeing - or rather, what she wasn't seeing. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, hastily opening up the Internet browser. Maybe this was some sort of – of weird prank? No, even that was impossible. Again, time loops. Nothing changed. Or at least nothing was supposed to change.

'define spoon' she punched in, then waited anxiously for the page to load.

 **No results containing all your search terms were found.**

 **Your search - define spoon - did not match any documents.**

 **Some results have removed due to Safe Mode. If you would like to disable Safe Mode, please click here.**

Okay, that was it. Something had gone very, very wrong, and it was kind of freaking her out, too. She knew she couldn't fix it - but there were two people who could. And she had to get to them - and fast. She knew from much past experience that they wouldn't stick around in the backyard much longer before going off with some sort of super-dangerous flying rocket skateboards or whatever they were.

Running through the house, she threw the sliding glass open with such force that it rebounded backwards with a dull thud. Oh, well - time was looping anyway. Twelve loops ago she'd straight-up broken through the glass door in another failed busting attempt.

(But twelve loops ago everything had seemed normal, too.)

"Guys! Guys!" she shouted, relieved that they were still in the yard. "I really need your help! There's this really weird thing that's happening! Days keep repeating because of a machine thingy that Vanessa's dad made, and there was this wagon, and now things are disappearing, like tigers, and spoons, and—"

"Hang on," Phineas interrupted, an expression of curiosity coming over his face."What's a... "spoon"?

"What's a "tiger"?" Ferb added.

"See?" Candace gestured wildly, trying to get the point through their heads. "That's my point! Stuff's disappearing! and once it goes, nobody remembers it—"

That was when it happened. From directly behind her brothers, a horrid shrieking sound tore through the air. Her eyes felt like they were as wide as saucers by this point, and her brain completely locked up. A strange hole-looking sort of thing materialized behind her brothers, through which she could see only grayness and mist.

"No!" she shouted, lunging at her brothers. "Phineas! Ferb! It's coming for you! Get out of the way!" She barreled right into them, bowling them safely out of the way of... whatever it was, and coming to abrupt uncomfortable halt as she tripped in the process, crumpling into a face-first pile on the grass.

Right in front of the portal.

The sound was deafening now - as was the suction. It pulled at Candace irresistibly, like a whirlpool in a bathtub drain.

"Phineas!" She yelled, finding herself unable to get back on her feet as it dragged her back into itself – into the gray mist that had filled her entire field of vision. "Phineas!"

It was too late.

In the blink of an eye, Candace felt the bunches of grass she was clinging to come tearing out of the ground, and she was yanked back into that awful void.

She fell into it - coming to an another painful crash-landing just inside. With a thunderous roar, the hole above her head slammed shut, sealing her away, leaving a ringing in her ears that would probably take many minutes to fully fade.

"Owwwwww," she moaned ruefully, rubbing her head. "Owwwww." Wincing at the pain, she pushed herself into a more upright position. "Wh-what? Where am I?" All around, gray buildings towered up from the ground, and a icy cool breeze whistled through them, penetrating her clothing and inducing an uncomfortable chill in her spine. "Hello?"

She clambered slowly back to her feet, rubbing her arms. "Is… anyone there? Phineas? Ferb? Anyone? Hello?" Her hair was standing on end now, and the blood rushing through her ears was the only thing she could hear. No answer... just her own breathing and bloodflow.

"Ohh," she scowled. "When Phineas and Ferb get here to rescue me, they are so busted! They are going down, down, do… do…" Her voice trailed off as her eyes drifted up and connected with the horizon of this place.

It was so… far away. And so huge. And so… empty. Flat and gray and quiet. Quiet like a tomb. The sky above was misty, and the ground below was flat and gray, and the buildings were still. And Candace Flynn suddenly felt very, very small.

A burst of terror seized on her. Phineas and Ferb weren't coming for her, were they? They - they'd forgotten all about her, hadn't they? It was just like with spoons and tigers and capris. But if Phineas and Ferb weren't coming for her, then…

...she was alone.

And so, so screwed.

The terror inside her grew exponentially as realized what that meant. She could feel herself freezing up in its awful face, wrapping her arms around herself in a vain attempt to ease the shivers rattling up and down her limbs.

"Ph-Phineas," she barely whispered, trying to call out for help - help that would never be able to come.

RRRRRIPPP!

She jerked reflexively away to the side as that horrible, horrible sound came again, just a handful of yards away, and a few feet up in the sky.

"What in the he-" A deep, husky voice cut through the sound of the portal of doom. And Candace watched with fearful eyes as, in a flurry of color and movement, someone tumbled backwards through and landed just a few feet away from her, kicking up clouds of gray dust.

The portal rumbled loudly and she clapped her hands over her ears - and just in time. The very ground itself shook this time, as the hole in time shut once more.

"Who - who are y - you?" she asked in a shaky voice, slowly letting her hands down. "What's happening?"

"Ugh…" the newcomer groaned slightly and coughed. "Stupid wild parsnips," they rejoined, in a much higher-pitched, much… more familiar? voice. Wait, what?

They pulled themself up to their feet, and Candace's eyes widened again. It was - it was her. A her that was taller, and older, and… had some sort of stick in her hand? But the resemblance was unmistakable. The woman's eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, and her skin was almost entirely covered in a snug black bodysuit of some sort, but her hair spilled down to her shoulders - in a bright shade of that orange that was as familiar to Candace as the back of her hand. Back of her head, even.

"Who - who are you?" she stammered again, trying desperately to make sense of this whole thing.

The new person – the new Candace – looked around, taking stock of her surroundings. She reached down to pat something jutting out of her wide utility belt, as if to reassure herself it was still there.

"I think that I should be asking the questions around here," she said coolly. "I can see what you're doing here. What is this, some sort of induced hallucination to make me divulge some of those sweet Resistance secrets to what's supposed to be a... six year old version of me? Nice try."

"Hey!" Candace exclaimed. "I am fifteen!" She wasn't entirely sure what she was expecting from this woman – but anything had to be better than being alone, didn't it?

"Shut up!" the woman - the older version of Candace? - snapped. "I can see right through this, Doofenshmirtz. You'll never break me. Never. So go ahead. Try all you want. But you're wasting your time."

"Wait, like Vanessa Doofenshmirtz?" Candace asked. Could that be who this… kind of frightening person could be talking about. "Or her dad?" Vanessa's dad had been the one with the machine that started the loops. Maybe this woman knew him? Maybe she – maybe she could fix this, could get Candace home again?

The words were already on her lips when the woman's eyes narrowed. "For an interrogator, you're pretty terrible at your job. But I guess I shouldn't be complaining. I don't know how Doofenshmirtz did this, but I can tell you one thing, if you think you're getting anything out of me, you've got another thing coming."

Candace stood up a little taller, becoming apprehensive at the harsh tone. "I – I have no idea what you're talking about," she protested, taking a single step closer to the woman.

As it turned out, that was a bad idea. The woman twirled her stick around like some kind of baton and the end lashed out, smacking Candace firmly across the chest, knocking the wind straight out her lungs as she flew backwards into the ground, gasping for breath.

"You stay away from me!" the woman snapped. "Bet you thought I was just going to sit there and take it, didn't you, Doofenshmirtz? No… not hardly. Maybe I should take this opportunity to figure out what you know, hmm?"

Candace cringed back in horror, having seen more than enough action movies to realize where this was going. "No!" she shouted desperately. "I don't know anything, I swear! I'm Candace Flynn - I'm not even from here! I was - was just pulled here, like, a second before you! I swear it's the truth! Please - please - don't hurt me! I don't want to be here anymore than you do! Please!" Her voice cracked, and combined with her aching head and chest, she felt like was ready to break down into tears.

The woman's eyes were completely unreadable, hidden behind those dark sunglasses. And though her stick continued whirling around and around menacingly in the air, it ceased moving closer to Candace's face. "Wait a second," the woman said slowly. "...you know my last name?"

"It's - it's my last name!" Candace confessed instantly. "Too - I mean, it's my name too!"

The woman's stick gradually began slowing down – and then suddenly stopped, as the woman ground one end of it into the dirt directly in between Candace's legs, not even an inch away from either one.

Candace let out a squeak of terror, but it went completly unnoticed.

"Doofenshmirtz doesn't know who I am," the woman said aloud. "He still calls me 'banshee-screaming girl'." She yanked her stick out of the ground and stuck the end of it under Candace's chin, forcing her face upwards – upwards to directly meet her peircing sunglassed glare. "If you're really not sent by Doofenshmirtz, then who are you? Don't leave out anything."

"I - I - I," Candace stammered, swallowing. The end of that stick was hard and cold, pressed beneath her lower jaw. "I'm Candace Gertrude Flynn. Like - like I said, I'm fifteen years old. I don't belong here, really I don't. I just want to go home - to my parents, and my brothers, and Jeremy and… and…"

"Your brothers?" the woman asked.

"Ph-Phineas and Ferb," she managed in reply, offering a weak smile. "When I get back, they are so… busted?"

Much to Candace's relief, the stick suddenly dropped from its uncomfortable position to one of hanging uselessly by the woman's side. She rubbed her chin, and then her aching breastbone, and then the growing lump on her head.

Today had not been a very good day.

"There's no way Doofenshmirtz could have that information," the woman mused aloud, interrupting Candace's attempts to ease her hurting body parts. Her expression hardened again. "Unless there was a mole in the Resistance."

Candace wasn't sure how to respond to that - not at all. What was this 'Resistance' the older woman - older her? - kept referring to? She was pretty sure there was nothing she knew of called that.

"I promise that I'm not a - a mole." Candace swallowed hard, the older Candace's dangerous-looking weapon still in the corner of her eye. "And Vanessa's dad didn't send me. I barely even know the guy. All I know about him is that I was in his laboratory and accidentally pressed a button on the thingies in there - and then time started looping and things started disappearing and then it was going to eat Phineas and Ferb, but I pushed them out of the way and it ate me instead and… now I'm here."

Well, it was a pretty wild story, if she did say so herself, but there wasn't really anything else she could do other than tell the truth - no matter how wild it was - and hope to high heaven that the older her believed her.

Thankfully, Older Candace appeared thoughtful - and her stick was still hanging mostly motionless. It moved once, and Candace cringed away, but didn't stir beyond that.

"I knew this was Doofenshmirtz's fault," she finally muttered under her breath, so quietly that Candace had to strain her ears to hear. "It always is. I swear, one of these days I'm gonna get him - and he's going down, down, down." Her grip tightened on the stick in her hand, and its end tapped restlessly on gray dusty ground of… wherever they were.

"You… you do believe me, though?" Candace asked, wincing slightly as she did so, almost afraid of what the answer might be. Please don't hurt me anymore.

Older Candace pushed her sunglasses farther up the bridge of her nose. "Imma be honest here: no. Not hardly. But it takes a lot to earn my trust, so don't take it personally. Instead, however, I'll tolerate you. If only because I'm pretty sure I have met… another me, from another dimension, a long time ago. They… were weird - but also helped overthrow Doofenshmirtz when he was still supreme leader. So, I'll give your ridiculous story the benefit of the doubt."

Candace heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank you – thank you. I swear I'm telling the truth, really I am. I… don't have any way to prove it, I guess, but it istrue."

"I'm sure," Older Candace grunted noncommittally. She stopped and surveyed the surroundings. "What… is this place?"

Candace shuddered again, pulling herself back to her feet. "I… don't know. All I do know is that, well, whatever comes here through one of those rifts gets forgotten all about."

"What?" Older Candace stopped and removed her sunglasses, wiping the gray dust that had coated them off onto her... it was sort of like a shirt? Except for the fact that it was solid black and hugged the woman's body more tightly than Candace had seen any swimsuit ever do. "You keep adding random crap to your stories. If you're going to tell me something, you give it to me straight and all at once. You hear?"

"No - I mean, yes, yes, okay," Candace stammered, lifting her palms, slick with sweat by this point. "Sorry."

Older Candace nodded. "Now what was that about being forgotten?"

"I - I don't know for absolute sure," Candace clarified. "But it seems awfully like it - when something falls through the rifts, everyone forgets all about it." She suddenly remembered herself trying to look up spoons on the Internet. "And it, uh, apparently gets erased from existence, too. Even in the past. So… I guess the world acts like it was never there?" That seemed a good explanation, right? What other explanation could there have been for that – for searching something on the Internet... something she knew existed, too – and then find nothing?

"Oh, you have got to lying through your teeth," Older Candace muttered. "Acts like it - so I guess, without me, Doofenshmirtz never got deposed? He's back in power? That's wonderful."

Candace shook her head, wanting to shrug, but deciding against it since she didn't know quite what the older version of herself would react like. "I mean, that's kinda what I saw with… spoons and tigers. And capri pants." She shuddered. "It's - it's really scary, actually."

"Can't afford to be scared, girl," Older Candace said sharply. "Get off your butt and follow me, unless you want to be left alone. There's got to be a way out of here somewhere. And I'm gonna find it. Doofenshmirtz'll never get the upper hand on me - at least, not for long." She paused. "I swear, if we run into any NORMbots, I'm gonna lose it."

Candace couldn't say exactly what a 'NORMbot' was supposed to be, but they sounded pretty scary too, and so she also hoped they didn't run into any. She straightened her clothes and set off following along as Older Candace apparently chose a direction at random and struck off.

Older Candace's stride was long, and her pace was quick. To the point that it wasn't long before Candace found herself struggling to keep up - but she daren't say anything about, for fear of the permanent scowl that seemed to reside on the woman's face at all times for the stick clutched tightly in her other hand. Her eyes were permanently hidden behind those pitch-dark sunglasses, and Candace wondered how she could even see with them on. It wasn't even that bright here.

"Keep up!" Older Candace remarked, in a sort of off-handed way, after about what had to be at least a half hour – or maybe more – of walking endlessly through the deserted gray city that stretched on in all directions around them. "I will leave you behind if you start slowing me down. I've got places to be, and dictators to overthrow. Again."

"I'm - sorry," Candace panted. "I - swear - if - I - ever - get," she stopped for a huge deep breath "-home, Phineas and Ferb are so busted."

That seemed to give Older Candace pause, if only for a moment, before she resumed her effortless stride. "So, you're another one of them, hmm? Pathetic."

Candace had no idea what that was supposed to mean, if anything at all, so she didn't respond, instead focusing on keeping up with her older self.

The uneasy silence settled back down over them as they walked and walked onwards. Gradually, however, the scenery began to change. The gray ground underfoot morphed into a thick carpet of brown, crunchy grass that had apparently been long dead - and fell apart at the slightest movement. There were more lampposts scattered about - also off, but not gray, which was enough to give Candace the tiniest bit of hope.

Because hope at different colors was so rational. Oh well.

Older Candace's foot banged into something, and she knelt down and picked up a big piece of rusty metal. She stared at it for a minute, and rubbed at the faded and disfigured surface with her hand, before blowing on it. "The… Coolest… Coaster… Ever. Version three point zero. And something about… hyperspace? Huh. I wonder... nah. Not his style."

Without a second thought, she chucked it over her shoulder and resumed walking.

"Hey - wait a second!" Candace exclaimed. "That - my brothers built a thing a few months ago. At the beginning of summer. They called it the 'Coolest Coaster Ever' too." And then they'd done it again during the musical, too, except two point oh. And hadn't Older Candace just read 'three point zero'? Did that – what did that mean? Phineas and Ferb were at home, not here.

Older Candace glanced down at her and shrugged. "And your brothers are here? Kid, that sign was rusted all to nothing. It hasn't been touched for a good twenty years, at least."

"I - I don't know," Candace admitted. "Maybe - I mean, there's already two of us. Maybe there's three? Or something."

Older Candace shrugged again. "Could be. Heck if I know - or care. I just want the way back where I belong. My little brothers need my protection and if the world really does think I 'never existed', then I've got a bone to pick with Doofenshmirtz. Again."

Candace never could quite understand just why this version of her seemed to hate Vanessa's dad so much. Apparently he was 'supreme leader' or something. It… made little sense. After all, Vanessa's uncle was also leader of Danville, and Candace really… had no opinion on the matter at all. Maybe when she got older she'd start hating mayors too?

She was so deep in thought that she didn't even notice when her older self stopped walking, and she walked directly into the older woman's back – which was hard enough that it felt about like she'd just walked full-speed into a wall, sending her stumbling backwards, a little dazed.

"Watch it," Older Candace warned. She tapped her stick on the ground, scratching meaningless patterns into the dirt with its end.

"Why'd you even stop?" Candace asked. "I thought - oh."

Directly in front of them, a huge building towered up from the dirt, jutting up, and up, and up, until it disappeared into the mist banks rolling above. Older Candace's grip on her stick tightened, and she slammed the one end down into the dirt. "Doofenshmirtz."

But Candace had other ideas. Because the base of the huge building before her looked awfully similar to one her own brothers had built not too many months ago - that had reached all the way to the moon. "Phineas and Ferb," she whispered. "Ugh - why is Mom never around when I need her? There's no way the Force could move this. They'd be so toast."

"Come on," Older Candace said through grit teeth, abruptly resuming her stride into the building. "If there's a way out of here, it might be in there."

"Is that what this place is called?" Candace pointed over to the left, where a small decrepit sign, covered heavily by rust, stood not that many yards away.

 **FA...L...ONE AH...ED**

It was a cryptic message, to be sure. Older Candace took one sideways glance and shrugged. "Later. This first. It looks to be a central hub of sorts - we might find something of some use here."

Candace suddenly remembered she'd skipped breakfast in her rush to get back to busting, and her stomach growled. "Like food," she pointed out.

"Sure." Older Candace began walking towards the building's entrance. The doors' hinges protested as they were swung open, releasing a long, ear-piercing screech that was painful to hear. Inside the place - was…

Well, it was different. At one time, it might have been very impressive. The roof was high and arching, and grand pillars towered up from the ground in support of it. There was something that resembled a fountain in the middle of the room, though water could neither be seen nor heard flowing through it.

The floor was a dusty, dull black, and their shoes echoed and re-echoed in the vast empty space as they walked through it.

"Dang it," Older Candace muttered, her voice reverberating weirdly. "There's nothing here."

In the far corner of the room, a single door could be seen, next to which stood a small podium with a book lying open on it. Its papers were yellowed with age, but the ink was still legible.

"Tele-vator," Candace read from the small sign above the door. She reached out and pressed the call button affixed to the wall, but nothing happened. Well, apparently the Televator - whatever that was - was broken. Not surprising given the general shape of things around here.

Older Candace whistled. "Hey, Little Me," she said. "C'mere."

Candace felt like snapping back that she wasn't little anymore - she was fifteen now, for goodness' sake, but something about her companion's demeanor restrained her. "What?"

Older Candace lifted the decaying book from the podium and pointed at the page. "Check it out." It was a guest book of some sort, covered with names. The names of… her brothers?

Phineas Flynn Sept 23rd 2017

Ferb Fletcher Sept 23rd 2017

Phineas Flynn Sept 23rd 2017

...Okay, that was weird. But that wasn't all - because right down at the bottom of the page, was a single name that stood out in contrast to all the rest.

Candace G. Flynn Sept 26th 2017

"I swear that wasn't me," Candace said slowly. "2017? That was twenty-one years ago - I wasn't even born then. And Phineas and Ferb definitely weren't."

"Well, yeah, I kinda figured," Older Candace responded dryly, her words thick with sarcasm. "You know what this means, right? There is another us out there - at least one more."

"That's… is that a good thing?" Candace wasn't quite sure.

Other Candace shrugged. "Either they're out there and they've lived here for twenty-one years, meaning they know this place well, or they were out there and they managed to leave. Either way - it's a good thing. We just to find them - or where they were, it that's the case."

"Ah…" Candace said slowly. "Yes, I guess that makes sense. Well - apparently Phineas and Ferb were here too. I mean, who else could have built this building in the first place? And they surely figured a way out."

"I don't know," Older Candace returned. She sat the book down on the podium, and took the pen that was sitting there, sliding it into one the pockets on her utility belt. "This might come in handy if we do find a third person."

"So… how are we gonna find this other Candace anyway?" Candace asked.

Older Candace waved her outside the building. "Have you noticed how quiet this place is? If we're really still and hold our breaths, we should be able to hear even the slightest movement - and surely the other Candace - if they're still here - wouldn't have gone too far from this spot."

It seemed like a fair enough plan to Candace. She accordingly took a breath and held it, letting the silence settle over them both like a blanket. She strained her ears for something, anything, but at first it seemed there truly was nothing.

The sheer silence of the place was eerier than she remembered, too. Her lungs started aching a little, and still the silence was-

 **KRAKOOM**!

"Meap!" Candace squealed, jumping and almost falling over for about the eighteenth time that morning.

Older Candace let her breath out and pointed in the general direction of the explosion's sound. "That way! Get a move on, little me!"

And Candace, grumbling again to herself about that, ran as fast as she could after her other self in that direction, past the cryptic sign from earlier. What would they find? She didn't know.

But she wasn't about to get left alone again. And maybe, just maybe, it would even be something that could get them home.

* * *

Candace Flynn was happy in life.

It sounded a bit simple, perhaps, and it was certainly not a way she'd have described her life when she was a teenager. Back then, she would have been… content, at most. Occasionally happy, yes, but frazzled and distressed most of the time. However, adulthood had changed all that – well, adulthood and her brother – and by now Candace could say she was happy and well and truly mean it.

Over the past years, her existence, though still energizing enough to feel like a rollercoaster ride sometimes, had no longer been shaken up in any major way. Her kids had grown into their early teens, which presented its own challenges, and Phineas and Ferb's company had continued to grow. What was more, her own stock had grown along with it. Where she'd occasionally tried to keep her activities separate from her brothers at first she was now fully embracing the fact that she was part of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated – not as an inventor, of course, because she could never do that on her brothers' scale, but as a lawyer and the one who was primarily responsible for that legal angle of the business – and it was good to see the company prosper. The only thing that had really shaken up her life had been the incident with the mind transmitter, and even that was over a year ago now.

Getting swapped with another version of herself had been… disturbing, to say the least. Discovering a parallel universe in which she was married to Jeremy Johnson and her own relationship was met with revulsion was a large part of that, but the fact that she had been trapped away from home had presented enough challenges in itself. Phineas wasn't there to comfort her and help her through it (well, Other Phineas had been there, but he obviously wasn't the same person) and it had allowed her insecurities, old and new, to rear their ugly heads once more.

But she'd overcome even that – not all by herself, mind you, but she'd still pulled it off in a way that left her satisfied with the way she had handled things. She was secure and comforted in her relationship, and even if she had managed to diagnose some flaws in it, she had managed to go out there and get them fixed. Phineas and Ferb were back in touch with their old friends, Buford and Baljeet, even if they still only interacted on rare occasions for the simple fact that they lead such different lives now. She'd loosened up on her fear that outsiders would find out about their relationship, leading to the first all-family vacation in years later that very summer.

They had taken two over the past season, partly in order to make it up to the kids and partly because Phineas believed so strongly in making the most of summer anyway, and it had been an amazing experience. She'd never forget that evening at the beach when they'd gone to that tropical island. Xavier and Amanda had been shoved off to play a game of cards in their rented beach house and it had thus been just her and Phineas, out in the open in a way that would ordinarily make her terrified of discovery, but while being in an area where no one knew who they were. Seriously, her brother might be oblivious and occasionally as blind to romance as their mother used to be to inventions, but when she gave him time to prepare he was capable of surprising her.

But it was the last day of summer today, and that meant that barring the use of time machines or other inventions capable of warping space-time, all that fun had to come to an end. Her life would return to normal – or as normal as it could ever be – and that was signified in her plans for the day, which had been extraordinarily limited. She wanted to go to the company to finish up some contracts, and maybe later help Amanda order a new school diary. (Seriously, the fact that her daughter insisted on an old-fashioned diary rather than just using her cell phone for school work was one thing. That she took hours to decide on which one to pick, on the other hand…)

Even their family's conversation at breakfast had been entirely boring. They'd tried to make Ferb's British ham and egg sandwiches for the kids, who had been feeling a bit down at the approaching return to the school benches. Phineas had fetched the subs and put butter on them, while she had manned the omelet station. But although she had managed to put a smile on her children's faces, Candace couldn't recall anything about the actual conversation even as little as ten minutes later. She thought she'd discussed business with Phineas, and maybe something about making another inspection visit to the Flynn-Fletcher holding over in the Quad-State Area which was having trouble manufacturing some items. It was always fun to go on such visits outside of their home town. After that, she'd gone for a walk outside, looking at the browning leaves on the trees… and then it had happened.

There had been no warning beforehand. One moment, she'd been staring at a tree – the next, a sound as from a pair of scissors had ripped through the morning sky. She'd just had enough time to wonder what it was about before being sucked upwards and landing flat on the ground again a moment later. (That hurt.) And when she got up, intending to run back inside as soon as possible and tell Phineas about what had happened…

…everything looked different.

She had been in her backyard, walking on relatively soft grass and surrounded by calls from birds, the soft breezing of the wind and the kind of chilly – though not outright cold – air of a late summer sky. Now, she was sitting on a hard underground – it felt more like a road than a grass field – and she was surrounded by towering buildings. There was no wind, and there was no cold either – the temperature was very… bland, if it could be called that. Everything around her was silent as a tomb, which was another creepy detail.

But above all, the whole place was incredibly grey.

Candace looked around, trying to reorient herself because she didn't feel ready to stand up just yet. Everything around her was grey. It was like she'd been dropped into one of those old black and white movies. And she couldn't see anyone. It was just… quiet, empty. Desolate, that might be the best word.

How in the world had she gotten here? Was this some kind of dream? No, the aching pain in her back and the all too real feeling of the ground under her debunked that theory pretty quickly. But that didn't help her surroundings make any more sense. If it wasn't a dream, then where was she? And how could she have gone from her own backyard to… well, this?

Oh well. Maybe where she was didn't even matter very much. What mattered was getting home. The silence was getting eerie, and the grey skies and buildings were getting really annoying. She supposed that it might be for the best to hang around and see who might be here and who could explain to her how she could have come here. She knew that was what Phineas would probably have done, and Xavier would undoubtedly have done so. Even Amanda might have stuck around for a while longer.

But for the moment, Candace didn't really care about where she was (even though there was something familiar about the whole place) and who could have brought her here. What she cared about was getting back home. She'd been just about to walk back inside the house and see Phineas again, and that was what she wanted to do more than anything right now. It was silly, of course, as she'd spent the night with him and seen him at their breakfast table, but the fact that she couldn't be with him somehow made her want to be with him, much more than if she'd been home and able to walk over any time she wanted. (That was kind of random, to be honest, but also very much an unchangeable part of being Candace Flynn. After the past forty-three years of living with a personality she'd tried and failed to correct so many times, it was something she had learned to no longer get riled up about.)

Candace stood up, feeling a little light-headed for a moment, and glanced around once again. Nope, there was still no one there, and no sound to be heard. (For a moment she did think she heard footsteps, but they stopped before she could decide whether they were part of her imagination.) Which was perfectly fine to her, as she was getting out of here right now. Fortunately, she had developed the habit of carrying her cell phone with her all the time, and after a brief moment of panic she felt a wave of relief come over her as she felt it in her pocket. It was there. It was there and she was going to be able to use it to teleport home.

Phineas and Ferb's teleportation device had been a pain the first time they'd programmed it into her cell phone (which had, in retrospect, mostly been because she just hadn't been paying any attention to what her brother was saying). But over the years, she'd managed to get used to the fact that one word into her phone could change her location. It was dangerous technology – she didn't want to end up inside someone else, after all, as that could end up being… unhealthy – but it was incredibly useful in emergencies. Emergencies such as this one.

Before her cell phone, situations like this would have left her running around like a headless chicken. Right now, all she needed to do was activate the insta-transporter, say "take me home" into her phone, and she would…

Oh-oh.

She'd used the required phrase – softly, of course, as her voice was a little on edge right now – but there was no reply. The insta-transporter she'd just turned on was only displaying its standard settings, and the reasons for that were obvious as she glanced at the corner of the display. Her phone wasn't connected to any signal.

"Take me home!" she tried again, slightly louder this time even though she knew the microphones would pick up her voice even when she whispered. But it was no use. The phone didn't function, and as she looked around Candace could see she hadn't moved an inch.

How was this possible? She didn't know much about the technology that had gone into making her phone work – she'd asked Phineas one time and she'd subsequently dozed off about ten minutes into his explanation – but she knew that it was capable of taking her home from another planet, another galaxy, if needed. Something about the receiver being strong enough to pick up a signal even light years apart, and the battery being built to last thousands of years. But she wasn't getting a signal now. Her internet connection, her ability to call her friends – it had all gone dead. Almost as if the signals weren't there.

Was that it, then? Had she somehow been transported to a place in which the signals weren't there anymore… or yet? Another time period? Still, that didn't explain the empty buildings (unless she'd been transported into a post-nuclear world, but everything around her looked far too intact for that). And she was reasonably sure that even if that had been what had happened, she would still have been able to teleport home or to some other unchanging landmark (even if she might not recognize its present state when she arrived), thanks to the accumulative memory of the phone's database. So another time period was not a very likely conclusion. But if even that explanation was not radical enough to explain her abrupt appearance, the greyness around her, the lack of contact she could make with anyone…

How about another dimension, then? Candace knew they existed, having been to one twice before. Still, neither the universe in which her other self was a resistance fighter against Perry's nemesis, nor the universe of her obnoxious Canderemy counterpart had been this grey. It was entirely possible that there was a grey dimension out there – infinite possibilities, infinite outcomes, after all, but that didn't explain why this place looked so… so familiar.

A grey world. Filled with grey buildings. Utterly empty of sound or color. And she'd gotten there through that strange ripping sound – almost as if something was cutting a hole into the sky, into the texture of time and space itse…

Oh no.

An old recollection of an adventure she'd undertaken almost thirty years ago crept up on her. That day when she'd tried to bust her brothers using Perry's nemesis' Do-Over machine, only to nearly end up breaking time itself. Almost immediately, the memories came back to her. They were vague, given all the years that had passed and all the other times she'd nearly destroyed everything, but the things that mattered were clear enough. She could recall with crystal clarity how close they'd come to almost ceasing to exist. Heck, as far as their parents had known (and now no longer knew) they hadn't existed, at least for a while.

And… if that was how it worked, then Phineas and Ferb weren't going to come and get her, right? She was stuck here. That thought was one that Candace tried very hard to suppress, because it was far too terrifying and too random, because darn it, at least last time she'd been bending space and time to bust her brothers, she hadn't done anything this time (unless somehow this was a punishment for being in a romantic relationship with her younger brother, but if that was the case Candace felt she really had to berate the universe for its sense of timing considering that Amanda was already fourteen by now).

But that thought of being stuck here was one that she couldn't let go. Because even if her brothers had been able to fix the situation last time, she was alone now, and with barely any memory of what they had done to repair the Do-Over machine. That, to be honest, left no way out for her. Well, she supposed that it was possible that Phineas and Ferb had landed somewhere else in this place. That would be fair, wouldn't it? Candace Flynn had been in many horrible experiences before, but there had always been some way out. Of course there was a way out here too. She just had to stay positive. Last time she was here had been an interesting adventure, and this time was going to be the same thing. Heck, most likely all she had to do was get up on some building and wait for a rift to reopen so that she could jump through it. That was more or less what she'd done last time, wasn't it? Surely the universe wouldn't be so cruel to only dump her here. From what she remembered, time rifts didn't even work that way. They just kept ripping and throwing more stuff and people in here. Sooner or later someone would come around, or something would come around, and it would enable her to get home. She just had to have faith in that, and she did.

Really, she did. The fact that the thing she was holding onto was shaking all over? That was because of the structural base of that thing being flawed, not her shivering. Don't be silly. It was just the… was that a traffic sign? It looked awfully like a stop sign, but it was grey like everything else here. Candace supposed that it would be too much to ask for this dimension to run on logic.

As she was holding onto the stop sign, because… because it was an easy landmark to stick to, of course… the thought of those footsteps she'd heard earlier occurred to her again. She hadn't paid much attention to them earlier as she had still hoped she was about to get out of here, but if she was stranded anyway, someone else being here might make a huge difference.

"Is someone there?" she called out, surprised at how weird her voice sounded when it was the only thing she could hear. She didn't think she would get any reply, but it didn't hurt to try. That was probably better than just standing here while the other person would also stand there, unable to decide on doing anything because they were both feeling uncomfortable about this non-dimensional place. That wasn't what Candace Gertrude Flynn did. She faced her insecurities, and she faced them head-on.

And miraculously, calling out actually worked. "I'm over here" a voice came back. "Where – where are you?"

For a moment, Candace almost couldn't breathe. That voice… that had been her own voice. Was it possible that she'd made a mistake in theorizing and that she had ended up in some other universe after all, or another time period? She knew she wasn't good at this kind of stuff. Scenarios and possibilities ran through her head as she contemplated whether to reply. She didn't want to risk this other Candace being like the last other version of herself she'd met… but even if she was, it was probably worth it if they wanted to get out of this place.

After pinching herself again to make sure she wasn't dreaming, she replied. "I'm over here" she repeated. "By the…" She stopped for a moment, being unsure how to describe her current location. It was really too bad that the one locator she had was absolutely nondescript. "Well, it's shaped like a stop sign, but it's pretty much all grey." Really? Was that the most sensible thing she could say, considering the surroundings she'd been in for a couple of minutes now? "Just like everything else, come to think of it."

She waited, wondering whether she'd made the right choice, until a voice piped up again. "I see you!" Other Candace exclaimed. "Hang on, here I come."

Well, it wasn't like she'd been planning to do anything else. Candace looked in the direction the voice had come from and squinted (maybe one of these days she had to think about getting her eyes fixed, too. At least when that time came, she wouldn't make a fuss about it like Phineas had.) Sure enough – jogging towards her was a person who was undoubtedly another version of the person she'd seen in the mirror just over half an hour ago. Other Candace's hair was slightly more disheveled and she was holding a weirder looking cell phone than Candace was, but it was definitely her.

Most importantly, Other Candace looked like she was the same age that Candace was – possibly a little younger. Apart from the smile on her face, she looked almost exactly like the version of herself that she'd met last year. Candace sure hoped that she wasn't meeting her again. Even if she didn't want to be picky when she was stranded in the middle of nowhere, she had no desire to see that other Candace ever again. She'd ended up with Jeremy, of all people, and she had never stopped berating Candace about her own life choices.

At least this Candace looked like she was less insufferable – not that she could tell after having exchanged only a couple of sentences with her up until now. Candace wondered whether her other self was with Phineas too? It might be an interesting topic of conversation.

Conversation, yes. Because, as Candace realized with a chill in her stomach, that was really all they'd be able to do. Phineas wasn't here, not yet at least. Ferb wasn't here. And unless walking around would allow them to meet all sorts of people who knew how to create and operate a device that could break open the space-time continuum – or unless some other rift would tear open and suck them right back in – they would only be able to talk to each other and wait.

Maybe that was a good strategy in itself. Waiting, biding their time rather than panicking and getting lost somewhere, and then going home when the opportunity availed itself. In that regard, she was glad to meet another version of herself here. Because even though Other Candace was just as doomed to hang out here and wait as she was, at least they'd be able to talk to each other about it. At least they would be able to exchange life stories. And by doing that, they would be able to pass the time and make their stay in here a little less unpleasant.

It might not have been the original meaning of the phrase 'misery loves company', but Candace Flynn was ready to take it with both hands.

It wasn't like she had any other choice.

* * *

 _A/N: Candaces introduced this chapter:_

 _Candace - or Teen Candace: Fifteen-year-old girl fresh from the tail end of her two-month-long Last Day of Summer. Is determined to see her brothers busted for the things they do, and date Jeremy while she's at it._

 _That One With the Sunglasses/Older Candace - or 2D Candace: Adult Candace from the second dimension (featured in "Phineas and Ferb Across the Second Dimension"). Leader of OWCA and the 2D Tri-State Area. Archenemy of Heinz Doofenshmirtz._

 _Candace Flynn - or FLS Candace: Adult Candace featured in "Fear, Loving and Secrets in the Tri-State Area" and "Canswap". Has made unique life choices, perhaps._

 _This isn't the end - it's not even the beginning of the end. Perhaps, though, one could consider it the end of the beginning. Because, you know, it is._


	2. This Collaboration Feels So Wrong

_A/N: FanofBttf: The second chapter, starting off right with adding one more Candace, and then shoving in another near the end just for the fun of it. These narratives of all the different Candaces landing in the non-dimension might get a bit confusing, but eventually it'll straighten out. Bear with us here._

* * *

It had been a good day today - well, until now, Candace thought, and her definition of good days was a generous one indeed. She'd managed to convince Phineas that they should get rid of that Ferris wheel in the backyard. Not that it wasn't cool - but it interfered with the Random-Sky-Beam protection grid. And the Force had been noticeably more active lately, mainly because their mother had been over to visit several times in the past week, so the lack of protection was becoming steadily more and more annoying, becoming almost reminiscent of the times before Linda Flynn-Fletcher had discovered what her children did in her absence, even if it could never quite be that bad again.

Apparently the Force hadn't liked that idea, though. Or something of the sort - because on her way back from the garage with all the stuff they'd actually need for the demolition project, she'd tripped over her own feet somehow and heard a sound.

But it wasn't just any sound - it was a high-pitched shrieking. While also low and rumbly. Loud and quiet and ear-splitting all at the same time. It was a sound that she hadn't heard for a good twenty years, and one she would have been perfectly happy with never hearing again, either.

It was the sound of space and time being forcibly torn asunder to reveal that which lay beyond all essence of reality.

And the hole in existence rumbled and belched, and she yelled out uselessly as she toppled head-over-heels out of the universe.

When she finally collected herself again, Candace groaned as she slowly pulled herself to her feet, and looked around.

A thick gray mist hung low over the ground, obscuring everything in its infinite shrouds. Solid-gray buildings towered up here and there, and gray lampposts and signs and streetlights and crosswalks and… everything. It was a veritable lifeless gray recreation of the world.

Candace's eyes grew wide as she scrambled down to where her phone rested in her pocket.

 **9:54 AM, Wednesday, September 22nd, 2038** glared at her from the screen.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. This can not be happening again. Please no.

She brought up the phone to her face.

"Call Phineas."

The phone rang only once before breaking down into a series of long, monotone beeps. "No signal." the robotic voice announced.

No, no, no, no, no.

"Call nine-one-one."

But it was useless - no signal meant no signal, no matter who she tried to reach. And the indicator in the corner was no lie - the small red 'X' representing the lack of connection.

A cold feeling crept up in her gut, triggering a wave of nausea to wash over her. There was no denying it anymore. She recognized this place - and this time.

It was the last day of summer.

And she was back - back in the non-dimension, in the land beyond time, in nullville, in whatever you wanted to call it. She preferred to call it 'a nightmare', loosely based on the nightmares she'd occasionally had over the years prominently featuring the place where you were beyond all help, should you ever end up there.

But that had been okay, because it had been a dream, and she'd had Phineas to remind her of that and help her go back to sleep.

She pinched herself, wincing at the shooting jolt. But this, this was no dream - and she was all alone.

Her grip on the now-useless phone in her palm tightened exponentially until her knuckles began turning white. Panic was setting in, and she felt a strong urge building up to simply scream in terror. What else could she do?

No, Candace, don't panic. Don't! You're okay. You're okay. Phineas and the kids'll surely notice that you're missing and they'll come find you.

The blatant lie failed. No one would come find her. No one could come find her. They wouldn't remember her. The universe would shift into the track that it would have taken had she never existed. Amanda and Xavier wouldn't even exist anymore, and Phineas - well, she couldn't say exactly where he'd be. But it would certainly be vastly different from the life they'd led together just minutes before.

A cold panic seized her, and she took off running through the dead, lifeless of the non-dimension, her footsteps echoing loudly through the dull gray streets. Where was she going? She didn't know. There was nowhere to go, really. She knew what the non-dimension was.

An infinite plain of nothingness. A place outside of all that existed. A place that you could never escape from, save for using Pizzazium Infinionite to physically rip a hole in the space-time continuum to allow you back inside.

But - just like so many years ago - there was no Pizzazium in the non-dimension. And she had none on her, obviously.

The thought of the super-energetic material gave her pause, and she stopped for breath under a gray awning that jutted out from one of the buildings.

Okay, Candace. You've been here before. And you've gotten out once before, too. So you can do it again - just like last time. You just need to stay calm and repeat the process from last time.

Which wouldn't be easy - the 'staying calm' part just as much as the 'repeating something you did twenty years ago' part. But she had to do it - somehow. People were counting her.

Okay, well, technically... no one was counting on her - even her brother, who'd been her lover for over a decade now - wasn't counting on her. Because as far as he knew, she didn't exist - and never had.

Still, the moment she stepped foot back in reality, that would change, and all go back to normal. So, even though technically she knew no one was counting on her, it was just plain comforting to think that, somewhere out there in the space-time continuum, there was someone.

So what was the first step to getting back to reality? Finding a rift, obviously. If she could find a natural rift, that'd be great. If she had to open an artificial rift, that'd… be a problem.

Sitting down cross-legged on the ground, she pulled out her phone again and laid on the ground in front of her. There was some hope here, at least. She reached into her other pocket and produced a miniature screwdriver set that she'd thankfully taken the time to tuck in there before her fall.

The phone's screen flickered brilliantly twice, and fuzzed over with static as she pulled off the back panels and began removing its internal components. There was the Internet receiver, and the GPS chip, the graphics processor, and the voice modulation chip, and the hard drive, and the CPU.

She worked as quickly and as neatly as she could with the small selection of tools she had. It was finicky work - even though they were miniature, the tools were still too big to be easily used for what she was trying to do.

Nevertheless, powered on panic and desperation, she got the job down. Returning the modified bits and pieces into the device, she gave it a second to reboot.

"Ouch!" A bright blue spark arced from the battery compartment as it turned on, and she lurched away from it. Blowing on her finger, she winced and shook it back and forth. That had hurt.

The screen came back to, slightly fuzzier than before, but it was on - and that was all that mattered, really. A small green bar rotated steadily in a circle on the screen, and Candace sighed in relief. It was a space-time aberration detector - and it was working. If there was another rift open right now, she would be able to see it, and hopefully get to it before it closed.

Almost at that exact second, a small red dot flashed on the screen.

There!

She snatched up the phone - well, it wasn't exactly a phone anymore - and took off running again. She had to make it to the rift before it closed, just had to. It was the only way she'd ever get home again without Pizzazium Infinionite.

This rift wasn't that far away, really, just like - a thousand or so feet. Even so, it was simply to far to make. She ran as quickly as she could, but before more than the half distance had been closed, the red dot on the screen, with its potential return home, blinked out.

"Oh, dang it!" she exclaimed loudly, suddenly wanting to throw the device against the ground and see it shatter. That had been a really good chance - and now it was gone.

Well… all there was to do now was wait around until another rift opened up elsewhere, and hope that she could make it to that one quicker.

She leaned against a random telephone and slid down to the ground, eyes on the screen, watching and waiting.

When, suddenly, the deafening silence of the non-dimension was shattered by the sound of a voice. But not just any voice - it was her voice.

"Is someone there?"

The sudden voice made her start - and that fact that it was her own voice even more. Candace had heard her own voice coming from another's mouth several times before - all to do with time travel, and also once on an ill-fated trip into the future many years ago that… she preferred not to think about. That future had been averted, and for good reason.

Still, if her future self - or past self - was also out here in the non-dimension, it was probably good news. Although her past self wouldn't know anything that she didn't already, two heads were still better than one.

"I'm over here," she answered, looking around in the general direction of the voice. "Where - where are you?"

There was a split-second of silence before the other voice answered. "I'm over here - by the… well, it's shaped like a stop sign, but it's pretty much all gray. Just like everything else, come to think of it."

Candace turned to the sound of the voice, and her eyes followed the path of the road until they fell on a bright spot of color - that stood out in bold contrast to the rest of the monochrome universe.

"I see you!" she called out. "Hang on, here I come."

She eagerly climbed back to her feet and closed the distance between herself and her quantum duplicate.

"Hey," the duplicate said. "I'm Candace."

"And so am I," Candace replied, reaching out to shake her self's hand. "So, uh - are you me from the future?"

The duplicate frowned slightly. "I don't think so? Unless you're me from the past, I guess. Wouldn't be the weirdest thing to happen to me."

"Well, okay then." Candace glanced down at the aberration detector in her hand. No new rifts yet. "What year are you from?"

"Two thousand and thirty-eight?"

"Hey! Me too. I guess we're both from the same year, then." She paused. Why had she been so certain that this other... her was older then she was for some reason? Blinking, she shook her head. Whatever. "What day was it when you fell here?"

"It was September twenty-second. Speaking of 'here' - what exactly is this place? I feel like I recognize it, but it's sort of fuzzy."

Candace raised her eyebrows. "You've gotta be a future me, then. If you were past me, it would most definitely not be fuzzy." She gestured wildly around the general area. "Welcome to nowhere, me. It sucks here. You know how they say 'We're in the middle of nowhere'? Yeah, it's that, except completely literal."

"Huh." Her quantum duplicate looked thoughtful. "I was afraid that you would say that – because although I didn't want to believe this was it at first, I actually do remember this place. From ages ago - Phineas and Ferb fell in here and I had to chase them through."

Candace nodded. "Yes, yes. It was horrid, wasn't it? I don't particularly like talking about it." She frowned as a sudden thought struck her. "But if you're a future me - from the later in the same day I came from, how come I forgot all about that week so quickly? Did I, like, hit my head and fall into a time machine or something?"

The duplicate shook her head. "No, I don't remember anything like that happening. I also can't say I remember it being a week? But it was ages ago and, as I said, really fuzzy. Though this whole 'meeting another me' thing is getting pretty old by now."

Candace scratched her head thoughtfully. "If I had a quantum ion trace particle detector I could easily nail down exactly where in the future you're from." She glanced down at her phone again and mentally recalled what was in the miniature tool set in her pocket. "I don't think I could turn my phone into one of those, though."

Her duplicate chuckled slightly. "No, probably not."

"Don't have any ion stabilization protocols," Candace agreed. "Well, shoot. How're we supposed to figure it out now?"

The duplicate shrugged. "I don't know. Since you think you're from the past, just tell what you were doing and I'll see if I remember it?"

"Oh!" Candace exclaimed. "That's a good idea. Why didn't I think of that? Okay, so, hang on. What was I doing when I fell?" She paused for just a moment to think. "So, it was about ten in the morning, obviously. Uh - I'd just convinced Phineas that we really should tear down that Ferris wheel in our backyard and was-"

"Hang on, hang on," her dupe cut in. "You had a Ferris wheel - in your backyard?"

Candace nodded. "Don't you remember? It's been there for ages now. Like, over a year."

"Well, it does sound like something Phineas would do," the duplicate mused. "But no - I've certainly been in my own backyard in the past year, and while there was plenty of junk, there was a distinct lack of Ferris wheels."

"Wait - so you're from the same year, and the same day as me," Candace replied. "Yet you remember no Ferris wheel? Where did it go?"

The duplicate looked thoughtful. "You know, I'm starting to think that we may not be time-traveling copies of the same person after all. In fact, I'd bet that we're actually from different - if only slightly different - dimensions." She squinted at Candace. "You know, this is making me wonder if we've talked before."

"So instead of being quantum duplicates, we're spatio-temporal duplicates?" Candace asked. "Huh. I could see it, I guess. Wait a second - do you normally talk to your spatio-temporal duplicates or something?"

Other-Dimension Candace - since apparently that's who she was - chuckled and shook her head. "No. Well, it's happened a few times, though always in unpleasant circumstances, for whatever reason. Kinda tainted the whole 'alternate dimension' thing for me."

"Well, I guess you're in luck, then," Candace said. "Because you're now outside of all dimensions. And so am I. Yay us!"

"Yeah, about that…" Other Dimension Candace looked down for a moment, as if thinking hard. "This might seem like a weird question, but we're in a weird place so I suppose it's warranted. I… couldn't help but notice it when you said 'I convinced Phineas to tear down the Ferris wheel in our backyard'? You share a - you two live together?"

Candace suddenly felt herself growing very red. "Well, I-" she stammered, trying to conjure up the same lie she'd been rattling off for the past many years in row. "I mean, of course, like - it's 'our' yard, we - uh - we jointly own it. Not like, weirdly, you know, but - but - business! Of course. It's nothing - really it isn't. I don't know what you're talking about."

This was not a subject she intended to broach with her alternate dimension self. That'd be a great way to get tossed out on her butt and get absolutely no help at all.

Other Dimension Candace raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh." She grinned in a slightly mischievous way. "At least you're not the alternate dimension me I met before."

"Why - what was she like?" Candace was both curious and desperately wanted to steer the conversation away from this… awkward subject. Not that she felt awkward about Phineas - no, of course not - but to confess it to another version of herself, doubtless one with a much more… ordinary outlook on things? Yeah, no.

Other Dimension Candace waved the question away. "Lets not talk about her, beyond saying I don't particularly think that she'd be very likely to share a… backyard with Phineas. You know, for business."

Candace flushed again, but tried to pretend she didn't notice the pointed glance. "Okay, then," she agreed. "I mean, we really should kinda be focused on getting out of here, I guess."

"Speaking of which." Other Candace nodded. "How exactly are we supposed to do that again?"

Candace looked around at their dull gray surroundings, hunting for even the tiniest spark of inspiration. "I can't say I know for sure," she finally relented. "Without Pizzazium Infinionite, any attempts to tear the continuum to let us back in are destined to fail."

She paused.

"Wait, that's it!"

"What's it?" Other Dimension Candace seemed confused. "Why don't we just sit down here and wait for Phineas to rescue us? Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're lost?"

"No, no, no - well yes," Candace said, waving for her other self to follow her. "But it obviously wouldn't work here, since we don't exist anymore. But that's okay, because I have an idea!"

"Right, I'd… been trying to forget about the whole non-existence thing." Other Dimension Candace followed as she began to walk briskly along the edge of the dull gray street, eyes glued to the horizon. "But even if we know our brother won't come for us, that still doesn't give us another way out, right?"

"Oh yes, yes it does," Candace replied. "Don't you remember this? Either way - I've got a plan. Come on, me. We need to find the Fail Zone."

"Fail - Fail Zone?" Other Candace asked, sounding more confused by the moment. "I thought you said we were outside of everything? And why would we want to go somewhere called 'Fail Zone'?"

"If we wanna get home - which we obviously do - the Fail Zone's our best shot at it." Candace explained. "It's the junkyard where Phineas and Ferb ditched all their constructions that failed to penetrate space-time without Pizzazium. And it's probably in bad shape, but it's still there. And that's practically a gold mine for us." She paused. "Don't you remember this?"

Other Candace shook her head. "I have no idea what you're talking about, really. But that's not even important - I still don't get how a junkyard full of scrap's gonna help us?"

"Oh, come on - that's actually the easiest part. I don't remember what exactly was there - and I do remember blowing part of it up at one point - but I know there's a ton of scrap. Scrap that can be repurposed into whatever we want. Oh, yeah - and there's a freaking Molecular Re-Atomizer." She grinned back at her other self. Phineas wasn't here, but she could do the honors just as well. "Candace - I know what we're gonna do today. Even just building a gadget capable of reading the fluctuation of the continuum would be vastly better than my little thing. It'd let us predict rift locations, to some extent."

For a brief second, Other Candace's face lit up, but it was quickly replaced with an expression of worry mixed with confusion. "Wait - I mean, that sounds helpful. But… Phineas and Ferb aren't here? How do you expect to do something like that? Before we both die of old age, I mean."

Candace raised an eyebrow. "What're you talking about? It's not that hard, just basic spatio-temporal math and stuff. We don't need Phineas and Ferb for this."

"What do you mean we don't need Phineas and Ferb?" Other Candace slowed in her brisk pace until she was a few paces behind. "I mean - we kinda do. Considering they're the only ones who've ever been able to do this kind of stuff. Messing with space and time? Yeah… I think you're getting a bit ahead yourself there."

Now Candace was confused. "Not really. I'm pretty confident we can do this." She shrugged slightly. "I don't know about you, but it's not terribly different from the stuff I've been doing… well, all my life - with a bit of a cooldown around my teen years, if you wanna get technical."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Other Candace had completely stopped walking by this point. "You can't be serious."

Candace turned around to face her other self. "...why not?"

"Because you're me. We can't do things like that - at least not without Phineas' and Ferb's help, I mean." She stopped momentarily. "What exactly were you planning on doing?"

"I don't really know," Candace admitted. "Probably see if I can scrounge up enough parts for a basic cold-fusion reactor. That'll provide enough energy to let us measure the fluctuations of spacetime without having to wait for a rift to actually appear. And see what sort of shape the Re-Atomizer's in. We can get food and water there, if you wanted some. Sound like a plan?"

"Build a cold-fusion reactor?" Other Candace spluttered. "You can't be serious? I can't do that."

"Really?" Candace was suddenly curious. "Because I can - I mean, this wouldn't be the first time either." She chuckled. "I've got experience - you don't have to worry about me accidentally irradiating us into ashes or something."

"But - but how?" Other Candace demanded. "You're me." She shook her head. "Nah, I don't believe you."

"Okay," Candace replied, shrugging. "Whatever. You'll see when we get there, I guess. I don't see why this is such a hard concept, though."

"You don't see why it's so hard?" Her other self echoed. "I don't know - maybe because you're claiming you can do, well, the impossible."

"Why shouldn't I be able to?" Candace asked. "Phineas and Ferb do it all the time - I assume your dimension's Phineas and Ferb do too? Then why shouldn't we?"

"Why shouldn't we?" Other Candace seemed somewhat defensive. "Because that's them? And we're us? There's a difference, you know?"

This was starting to get on Candace's nerves. Why was her other self being so… uncooperative? They really should get moving - they had places to go, if they did ever want to get home again.

"There's not really, no. At least not in this specific way." Suddenly, a realization dawned in her brain, so sudden and obvious that she wondered how she hadn't gotten it before. "Wait - you're saying you can't?"

Other Candace crossed her arms. "You only just now get that?"

"Then how on earth did you get your Phineas and Ferb back when you were here before?" Candace was thoroughly puzzled now.

"I don't really know what happened when I was here," Other Candace remarked. "We were only here for like… thirty minutes or some such anyway."

"Th - thirty minutes?!" Candace was nonplussed. "Wait, seriously? Oh, come on - how is this fair?" When the other Candace raised her eyebrows questioningly, she hastened to explain. "See, when Phineas and Ferb fell here from my dimension, it was six freaking days before we managed to get home. We were stranded here for like… two days, plus spending two more days in another random dimension trying to get back to ours. It was terrible - it sucked - and it was easily the worst time of my life. And you got to get away with half an hour? Gee, universe, that's fair." She rolled her eyes.

Other Candace snorted. "Seems fair to me, considering you're the one who can apparently do whatever your brothers can. How hard could it have been to get back home when you can just do whatever you want?"

Candace blinked. "Oh, please. You seriously think that what I can - that what your Phineas and Ferb can do - equates to doing whatever you want? Yeah… no. There's this little thing called science, and it tends to get in the way sometimes. Like right now, for instance."

"I've been living with my brother for almost two decades now." Other Candace retorted. "You can't tell me that it isn't exactly that. Doing what you want, when you want, physics be damned."

"Oh, yeah, okay, sure. Physics be damned! Totally! I guess if that's the case, I can just conjure up some Pizzazium Infinionite out of thin air and be on my way home right now, hmm? Except, oh wait, I can't." She glared at her other self. "It doesn't work like that, Candace."

"I'm sure you could find a way to do it if you wanted," Other Candace retorted. "Because that's all it ever is, isn't it? You get free reign to do basically whatever you want, and you don't have to do any work or worry about anything at all. Must be real nice for you, hmm? Why don't you work some of your great magic and poof us a way home?"

Candace scowled. "I'll have you know that you have no idea what you're talking about - so I'd appreciate it if you'd just zip it. I literally just told you - there's no Pizzazium Infinionite here! And no Pizzazium? Means no home. Ever!" She paused for breath. "Oh yeah, and just in case you didn't know - since apparently you think your brothers are just magical genies who can effortlessly handwave anything they want into existence - I do have things to worry about. Like, oh I don't know, the time a freak accident during a tornado trapped me in our storm cellar for thirty-three hours, and my head practically exploded and I nearly puked my guts out before somebody got to me. Because, yeah, that was fun. And the sore throat I had from that was so bad I could barely talk for three days - that was fun too."

A chunk of the anger and exasperation on Other Candace's face drained at that, replaced with a look of confusion. "Wait… why'd that happen?"

The question caught Candace entirely off-guard, as did the tone of genuine bewilderment that it came in. "Don't tell me you don't know this from your own Phineas and Ferb?"

Then again, it was probably fair - she herself hadn't known about withdrawals before she'd started running into the risk of experiencing them herself. If this other version of herself truly couldn't do the impossible like she and her brothers could - which Candace still didn't quite believe - it was sort of reasonable that Other Candace's brothers hadn't said anything to her. Plus the quite obvious fact that Other Candace wasn't partaking in a forbidden relationship with Phineas, which would also help reduce the chance that Other Candace had been told about this.

Hang on, Candace realized. Did she just say that she's been living with her brother?

"Well… no." Other Candace replied, breaking Candace's train of thought. "I mean, Phineas couldn't go without inventing for long, and he would definitely get miserable… but I don't think he'd actually get ill. I've not really seen him go without inventing for any protracted length of time either, but he's never mentioned anything like it to me before."

"Well," Candace said slowly. "It's a thing. It sucks. Say I get caught up in something and get distracted from the time? Bam! Headaches like you wouldn't believe. Oh, and nausea. And vertigo. And the cold sweats and, with enough time, the puking and what are basically seizures." She blinked, feeling slightly smug at the look of horror on Other Candace's face. "Fun times."

"...I mean, I'm pretty sure Phineas would've told me about something like that. It sounds… awful."

Candace shrugged slightly. "You just let the water boil and it's not a problem, really." Now that the intensity of the argument had somewhat died out, she did feel somewhat guilty for her part in it. "It's only really been a huge deal a couple times over the past years. Of course… that doesn't change that it's still bad." Her thoughts drifted to that incident with the storm cellar again, and cold chills ran up and down her spine.

She'd never seen Phineas so upset with himself after that had happened, even if it hadn't been his fault at all. Still, in a marked reversal of their usual roles, she'd made sure that he knew that it was alright - that she was okay, and that it was going to be fine, even if she'd been doing so while whispering because her mouth and throat were horribly inflamed from the hours of retching.

The rancid stench in the storm cellar had been overpowering for days after, and it had taken Candace several weeks before she'd worked up the courage to go back down there.

She didn't like to think about that time.

"So…" Other Candace started awkwardly. "I guess we should be heading to… wherever we were going before?"

"Right," Candace agreed, thankful for the distraction. "The Fail Zone. Come on, let's go. And I guess I'll prove to you what I can and can't do."

Other Candace frowned and crossed her arms, but said nothing, instead following quietly. A thick silence, broken only by the sounds of their footfalls, settled over them as they walked.

* * *

Candace Flynn felt useless.

It was a feeling she'd had many times before, most often in her youth, and especially around her brothers. Although she knew they would never deliberately try to make her feel bad about her lack of inventing prowess, and Phineas had spent a long time being convinced that she could do anything she put her mind to and he had a tendency to exaggerate her talents even now, she'd always known she was different. She could assemble some kind of invention, yes, once she got the blueprints for it. She could even recognize many of the parts her brothers used by now, and occasionally she would get a great idea of her own. But it would never be easy. It would never be without back-breaking labor. And no matter what happened, she would never quite get it, the way Phineas did. The way Ferb did.

The way her other self did.

She'd just spent about half an hour arguing with her counterpart, being unable to believe that she was what she said she was. It had taken her one minute of seeing Other Dimension Candace at work to make her believe her wholeheartedly. The way she operated around the cold fusion generator that was retaking shape before her eyes was proof enough that she could match anything Phineas and Ferb could do. And worse, Other Dimension Candace kept expecting that she would be able to do the same thing. Apparently, there was some kind of mental dam inside her mind and once it would break, she could do anything. Yeah, right. Candace had been inside her own mind several times, and there was no mental dam anywhere to be found.

But for some reason, Other Dimension Candace refused to get that (well, it might partly have been her own insistence that her counterpart couldn't do all this that had made other Candace insist that she could), and thus she'd been treated with looks of mild annoyance when she failed to get the right screwdriver. Because apparently, that set of seven identical screwdrivers were in reality very different and using the wrong one would fasten the screw in a way that could damage the inner processors or… whatever. And that would be a baaad thing.

It was just when she considered going over to the little shed in the back that housed the Molecular Re-Atomizer, which was apparently broken down after twenty-something years but which could easily be put back into operation if she'd simply fasten the quantum stabilizers and rebuild an atomic particle accelerator or… or something like that at least, because Other Candace had been rambling and apparently she wasn't going to explain it twice, probably because this was supposed to be child's play, and she just had to be the odd one out who happened to fail at that…

…and then Other Dimension Candace's tracking gadget bleeped.

Candace picked it up. She couldn't really determine their surroundings in this utterly desolate world, but the small measuring icon in the bottom right allowed her to tell that the yellow dot was only a fifth of a mile away this time. Her heart skipped a beat. "Candace? I mean, Other Candace?" (They were both finding that it was a really strange sensation to be talking to yourself. Or at least, it was when you weren't preoccupied the whole time by shouting at each other over your relationship choices.)

"On it" her other self replied, taking a few steps towards her and being handed the tracker. "Let's see, it's about 300 yards away, there's still wind here so that will impede us, giving us about…"

"Giving us no time to lose" Candace replied, grabbing her other self's arm and almost pulling it out of its socket as she started a mad dash towards the place the dot should be at. "Come on, come on!"

"I was trying to calculate if it was useful!" Other Candace snapped back. "It was a yellow dot, which means it's the most unstable kind of time rift – one that would likely close before we got there!"

"Which gives us all the more reason to run towards it and try!" Candace snapped back, wondering why she was wasting energy on yelling to herself.

"Not if the rift closes while we're still going through it, and we end up getting snapped in half!" Other Candace yelled.

That was enough to momentarily stop Candace in her tracks. "Wait – is that possible?"

"I don't know" Other Candace replied, frowning. "Probably not, but I don't want to take any chances." She shook her head. "In any case, it's no use anymore to run. The rift is gone."

Candace wanted to snap off some kind of remark about it being her fault, and how she'd probably been too attached to her own precious inventions that were so awesome and far better than them being rescued without her efforts… but that felt too mean, so she refrained from it. "Want to see whether somebody else dropped in?"

"Might as well" Other Candace said, shrugging. They turned the corner to the square where the rift had apparently opened, only not to see anything anyway because of this accursed mist. They stood there in silence for a few moments until they heard the distinct sound of someone groaning.

"Up ahead" Other Candace told her counterpart. "The rift must have opened up fairly high this time. Whoever it was was lucky that they could land on that stack of pillows."

"That stack of…" Candace spluttered. "Why is there a stack of pillows over there?"

Other Candace grinned. "For just these kinds of emergencies, of course. You didn't expect Phineas to leave this place without making sure anyone else who'd fall through a rift was safe, did you?"

"But if that do-over device was dismantled and there was no way rifts could spontaneously open again, why would he take precautions against something that was so unlikely to happen…" Candace began, before stopping. "Right. Phineas. Fair enough."

They had reached the pile of pillows by now, and a distinct shape was visible. Candace thought it looked familiar, but before she could really comment on it in her mind the other figure had started groaning again, and a familiar name – 'Jeremy' – slipped from her lips in a very familiar voice.

Candace froze and stared at Other Candace, who was similarly frozen. "Sure" she finally muttered. "Why not."

"You know, this means that our naming problem has just gotten even more complicated" Other Candace mused.

"I'm trying not to think about it" Candace retorted, taking a step forwards. "Hello? Are you all right?"

The third Candace – maybe she could just call her 'New Candace', at least for the time being – came to and looked around. "What? Where am I?" Her eyes met those of her counterparts, and after initial surprise (which they had been expecting) she looked at them with mild horror. "Oh no."

"Afraid so" Candace replied. "You're trapped outside of regular dimensional space. We don't know how we got here, but we'll have to work together to get out again. Can you stand?"

Instead of standing up, New Candace just groaned again. "Trapped outside of… oh, this is just perfect. I pay my taxes, I love my husband and my kids, I lead a very normal life and yet I get thrown into another dimension twice in two years!"

"Actually, we're outside of dimensional space" Other Candace pointed out. "I get the confusion, though. Technically this would count as a dimension as well in the classical sense, were it not for the more practical definition making such an interpretation impossible as we are in a space that is outside all known dimensions, to the point that even the evidence of our existence has been wiped."

"Hold on a second" Candace spoke up, frowning. "Did you say this is the second time you ended up in another dimension?"

"Twice in one year and two months, yes" New Candace said as she got to her feet. "My mind got snatched out of my own body and put in the body of a version of me who was… involved with our brother, if you'll believe that."

Other Candace froze and automatically took a step back, but Candace didn't really notice. She narrowed her eyes. "You."

"What do you mean, 'you' – oooohh" New Candace realized. "Of course. This is just perfect. It's not bad enough that I'm trapped outside of my dimension again and have to deal with other versions of myself, I just have to end up back with the loony one."

Candace snorted. The counterpart she'd met last year was just as annoying in the flesh as she'd been in their conjoined minds. "You're calling me the loony one? I couldn't believe you could consider yourself a perfect picture of mental health the last time we met, and after learning of what you said to Phineas at the bowling alley I certainly can't."

New Candace flushed, but didn't relent. "That was one short lapse of my temper" she bristled. "Do I regret it? Yes. But that doesn't mean you can use it to tar me with the brush of insanity. Not when you lead an insane life."

Other Candace cleared her throat. "Okay, so you two know each other" she said. "That's… that's great. Can we just go back to getting out of here now?"

"As soon as I've finished teaching her some manners" Candace snarled. "Look, I know you don't approve of my life and you're not going to approve. But the least you can do is treat me with some respect."

"Respect is something that should be earned, and I haven't seen you do anything to earn it!" New Candace snapped back. "Every single thing I learned about your life was crazy. How am I supposed to show respect for that?"

"This conversation about how normal we are is… very interesting" Other Candace spoke up. She looked even more awkward than she had before, for some reason – which was pretty strange, as she had seemed so in control of herself and the situation around her when she was still building that cold fusion reactor. (A memory that was so bizarre that Candace was almost beginning to doubt it again now that they were away from the 'Fail Zone'.) "But we do have to get out of here, so can you two please stop yelling at each other and come along?"

Candace stared at her. "You don't understand" she replied. "This is the version of myself I mentioned earlier."

"Wait, the one who didn't want to – who had no family business?" Other Candace stammered.

Candace rolled her eyes. She had no idea why her other self was being so sketchy about the whole 'relationship with Phineas' thing. Seriously, by now she should have easily been able to figure out that Candace was in a relationship with her own brother as well, and it wasn't like New Candace was going to spill the beans to anyone about the fact that her own inter-dimensional counterpart had committed incest. They'd lock her up in an asylum. Which might not have been a bad place for her anyway.

"Yes, her" she replied. "And while she was in our dimension, she insulted Phineas. To the point that by the time I saw him again, I could tell from his cheeks that he'd been crying."

Other Candace regained some of her composure, and she furrowed her eyebrows. "She did what?"

"Oh, come on!" New Candace exclaimed. "Would you give it a rest? I said I was sorry, didn't I? Yes, I messed up. Yes, I shouldn't have said any of… the things I said, and if I could go back and change them I definitely would. But it's not like he didn't deserve some comeuppance after trapping me in your brain – and now he got me involved in your craziness again, because there is only one person who could have stranded us here! What was it this time? An attempt to time travel? To bend other dimensions to his will? To convert other versions of us to your crazy way of thinking?" She scoffed. "I can't believe it! He's putting the sister he supposedly cares about in danger, and for what? For experiments! Experiments he should have quit when he was a teenager and was old enough to realize how dangerous they were, rather than continuing them into adulthood! It's crazy, it's pathetic, and I – "

Candace never saw Other Candace's right hook coming until it connected solidly with New Candace's jaw. The other woman fell right back into the pile of pillows, looking utterly befuddled.

Candace frowned. "I'd been meaning to do that, actually."

"I have no doubt you'll get another chance sooner rather than later" Other Candace darkly replied.

New Candace looked up at Other Candace as she got back up. "You… you…" she spluttered. "You're just the same! Probably just as messed up as she is, and unable to see the flaws in our oh-so-perfect brother! Well, forget it – I'm leaving! I'll find my own way out of here, thank you very much!" With that, she stomped off in the general direction her counterparts had just come from.

Candace just looked after her and exchanged a glance with her other self. "You think we should go after her?" she suggested, sounding indifferent and not bothering to conceal it. "To make sure she doesn't fall into a pit or something?"

Other Candace snorted, and shrugged. "Meh. Maybe it could benefit her to cool off for a while."

"Yeah" Candace replied. "It's not like she can go far in this place. She'll come back to us sooner or later."

Other Candace nodded. "So…" She looked sheepish, and held up her tracker. "Back to work, now?"

Although it wasn't different from the things she had said earlier, Candace could tell from her counterpart's tone that she wasn't about to be forced into accomplishing overly complicated tasks again. For some reason, she herself felt a lot better about their situation too. "Yeah, I guess so" she replied. "That cold fusion reactor isn't going to build itself."

Other Candace smiled. "You know, Phineas and I did build a self-designing car manufacturing line last year."

"Really?" Candace wondered. "That actually sounds pretty cool. How did that go?"

"That's a funny story, actually. You see, it all began in the week before Thanksgiving, when we'd been having trouble for a while with the latest modifications we'd installed into o-my own car…"

* * *

 _A/N: Candaces introduced this chapter:_

 _Candace/Other Dimension Candace - or DOSI Candace: Adult Candace featured in "Driving Our Sister Insane" and "All The Things That Can Change in a Hundred and Four Days". Likes to build things._

 _New Candace - or AYA Candace: Adult Candace featured in "Canswap". Based off the semi-canonical future of Phineas and Ferb as seen in "Quantum Boogaloo" and a certain episode (from which she derives her name) near the final episode of the show's tenure, an episode that should not be mentioned at all cost._  
 _Likes: Jeremy Johnson, normalcy. Dislikes: Incest._


	3. Differing Normalcies

The walk back to the Fail Zone after the… decidedly strange - but also brief - encounter with the third Candace didn't take very long. The stacks and stacks of long-since scrapped space rippers of all shapes and sizes stood out in marked contrast to the dull gray everything all around, making it easy to find their way back - provided they didn't get too far, otherwise the thick mist of unreality would have something to say about that.

Candace winced slightly and shook her hand back and forth, secretly hoping her other self didn't see the motion. She… hadn't really meant to hit her other self like that, nor that hard, although she was hard pressed to think that the third Candace hadn't kinda deserved it either. No Candace - no matter what dimension they may or may not hail from - should, or could, be justified in saying such things, surely.

Still, it was sort of annoying. That was her good hand - the one she favored for microsoldering work on miniscule components. Having to use her other hand would feel really weird, and probably be a lot harder. Oh, well - it wasn't like she had much of a choice, was it?

"So…" Other Candace spoke up. "What exactly is the plan, again? I mean, I get a cold fusion reactor. Are you just, like, gonna use it open a portal for us to leave through? Can you - is that possible?"

"I wish it was that simple," Candace replied. "No, I can't do that - no one can. The space-time continuum's got this natural flow of energy between dimensions going on. And if you go-"

"-if you go with the flow of the energy, to the dimensions downstream of you, it's very easy, but trying to open a portal upstream is much, much harder. It would take eight million gigawatts of energy, overloading the local power grid. I've… heard this before."

Candace glanced over at her other self and blinked. "And you said you couldn't do this kind if stuff." Other Candace shot her a significant glare, and she cleared her throat and continued. "Right. So, anyway - that's true. But the thing is, we're outside of all dimensions - outside of the energy flow entirely. And there's this protective barrier around the space-time continuum that's incredibly hard to get through, especially so from the wrong way." She paused. "But it can be done - with the help of this material known as Pizzazium-"

"-Infinionite? Hey, I know that stuff too. Phineas uses it for a ton of stuff at home. That's the super-energetic stuff."

"Yeah," Candace smirked slightly. "We - I - use it a lot too - as much as we can get our hands on the stuff. It is super energy-dense, in fact, it's quite literally the only currently known material in existence with enough energy to actually breach the the space-time continuum's protective outer shell. As you said, traveling in between counterclockwise dimensions is possible without it, though it's not necessarily easy. Traveling back inside space-time as a whole?" She stopped and shook her head. "Unless we get ahold of some Pizzazium, that's… not going to happen. We could build a battery with a capacity of ten thousand gigawatt-hours, and spend a hundred trillion years charging it up to maximum capacity, and we'd still only have three-quarters of a percent of the base energy requirement to open even the smallest of space-time rifts. That's to say nothing of actually trying to keep the rift open for any extended period of time."

"... you're making our chances sound awfully dismal, you know that?"

Candace grimaced slightly. "What can I say? Optimism is Phineas' job. I'm just… stating the facts." She laughed nervously. "Though I could use a good dose of that myself, too. It's just, well, unless you're Phineas Flynn, optimism's pretty hard to come by when you literally don't exist anymore."

Other Candace chuckled knowingly. "Yeah, I suppose you're right." She paused for a second. "So what's the cold fusion generator for, then?"

"We can use it to power a better space-time aberration detector than this tiny one." Candace held up her phone. "One powerful enough to predict rifts, to some extent. Which will drastically improve our chances of being catch a natural rift and slip back through it."

"Right. Well, let's hope it works."

Candace grinned. "Now you are sounding like Phineas."

"Well, I like to think he's rubbed off on me a little," Other Candace replied. "At least after all those years, if you know what I mean."

They had just reached the entry of the Fail Zone, and Candace's attention was drawn by the piles and piles of scrap. Most the stuff here was useless, but with a bit of luck, there should be enough here to finish the reactor she'd started previously. "Can't say that I do," she remarked idly, pushing a rusted photovoltaic neutronic phaser array out the way, then kneeling and trying to pry the stiff maintenance panel open.

"Uh huh." Other Candace seemed unconvinced.

The array's internal workings held nothing of value. Pushing the device farther out of the way, Candace turned to the next one, beginning to repeat the process. This.. could take a while, she realized. She really did wish Phineas was here with her. Along with - or perhaps even instead of - Other Candace. Who was pleasant enough, but it wasn't quite the same.

"So, what are you looking for?" Other Candace asked. "I can help."

"What?" Now Candace was confused. "I thought you said you couldn't do this stuff, though?"

Other Candace cocked an eyebrow, making a weird face. "That doesn't mean I'm dumb, you know. I'm pretty sure I've learnt enough from Phineas to be able to tell the difference between a…" she pointed at two of the random contraptions lying around. "... digital hard light wavelength obstructor and a - is that some kind of beta particle manipulator?"

Candace shot the device in question a glance. "Yeah - it's a transpirator. Huh, fair enough, I guess. See if you can find any pieces that look they could go to a neutronic phase emitter?"

"Neutronic phase emitter," Other Candace mumbled under her breath. "Okay… that's the thing with the, like, glass and the diodes and the, yeah, I know what it is. I'll see what I can find."

Well, for Other Candace's… rather stubborn attitude from not too long ago, she sure wasn't acting like any of the gadgets scattered around were strange to her. Candace suspected that it was because she was right - because Other Candace was another version of her, of course. No Flynn, no matter what dimension they come from, can be too far removed from the inventing genes, right? Actually, Candace didn't really know - she'd never been to another dimension before.

And apparently Other Candace got around, even to the extent of communication with her spatio-temporal duplicates. Which was pretty cool, if she did say so herself. Maybe she'd have to bring it up to Phineas when she got home. Communicating with versions of yourself from other planes of existence? Yeah, it was a promising concept.

"Hey, look, I found a quantum ion amplification… thing," Other Candace announced from behind. "Hang on, lemme get it out of here… got it!"

"Awesome!" Candace exclaimed. She glanced at the pile of parts she'd collected, mentally cataloging them. "You know what? I think that just about does it. We just need to find one more diode array and we'll be good."

"Oh, those things." Other Candace rolled her eyes. "Does your brother lose them in the couch all the time too? I don't even know how they end up there anymore. Sometimes I swear he's gotta be messing with me."

"Never a diode array," Candace returned. "Though we did lose thirty feet of electron conduit tubing under our bed and it took three weeks before it decided to show up randomly." She could still remember that incident. How had that tubing even gotten under there in the first place? No one used electron conduit tubing in the house, for obvious reasons. She was about to say something more, when she suddenly realized that Other Candace was staring at her very, very intently. "...what?"

Other Candace raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly. "Under our bed?"

Candace swallowed hard, feeling the blood rush to her face. "No - I mean, what? I - I didn't say that! I mean, I didn't mean to say that! I meant your - mine - his - a! A bed! A random bed that was…" her voice trailed away at the look on her duplicate's face.

"You know, I get the impression that you and your brother share a lot more than a family business." Other Candace crossed her arms, but her face was still marked with amusement.

"Wh - what do you mean?" Candace stammered, desperately trying to will away the heat she could feel radiating from her skin. This wasn't a subject she intended to talk about with another version of herself. No way. No freaking way.

"I don't know. I mean, you've said you share a yard, and I did catch that slip with the car, and just now you just went and said you share a bed." Other Candace grinned. "In fact, if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that you aren't in a family business at all - rather, it's the family business."

No, no, no, no, no - this could not be happening. Candace tried to think of something to say, to change the subject, to distract her other self. She reached out and mutely held up a diode array, trying to remind her duplicate what they were supposed to be looking for.

"Hang on," Other Candace said. "It's quite alright - how about I go first, hm?"

What?

"Because I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you and your brother are a heck of a lot… more intimate than your status as siblings would seem to allow. Now, am I right or am I right?"

Candace couldn't quite bring herself to move or speak or even breathe at that. What was Other Candace accusing her off, exactly? Of committing incest with her own younger brother? That… was bad - it was unthinkable!

Because, obviously, it was true - and no one was supposed to ever know, save a very small group of people, mostly people who'd figured out on their own anyway, and been consequently inducted into the group before anything could get out of hand. And that group did not include herself from other dimensions.

"Look!" Candace burst out in desperation. "I don't know how your dimension is but I swear that I'm not weird, okay, I'm not that weird and I'm sure you think it's disgusting and you never want to see me again and I can't really blame you for that but you really have to please remember where we are and we have to work together and I'm sorry that you had to find out I really didn't mean for this happen no one was supposed to know and I don't know how you-"

"I figured." Other Candace said calmly, cutting her off. "Well, what can I say? Welcome to the club? It's great to meet you."

Wait… what?

"I - I'm sorry?" Candace managed after a few seconds of staring at her other self.

Other Candace shook her head. "You're kinda bad at this - no offense, of course." She paused and grinned slightly. "Don't worry - you're fine by me. And by my Phineas, too - and I'm not necessarily using 'my' there in the context of 'my dimension', either."

"Wait, so you… and Phineas - Phineas from your dimension - you…" Candace stammered. "I… I don't… I mean, I just…"

Other Candace shrugged. "Believe it, I guess? It's the truth - I swear it. You've got no problems here." Her face hardened momentarily.. "Now that other version of us… yeah, there might be a few issues there - although what do I know? Maybe the fact we outnumber her now will be good for her."

Candace let out a long, low breath. This was… entirely unexpected.

Grrrrrrrrr…

That was also entirely unexpected, and compared to the utter silence of the non-dimension all around, it seemed very loud indeed. Candace whipped her head around to face the source, wondering what it would be that could produce such a throaty sort of rumbling in such a threatening manner.

Her eyes grew wide as she saw… it.

"It's - it's - a - a," she stammered breathlessly, but the long-unused word slipped her mind. "Like a lion, but the other one - that doesn't exist anymore."

A tiger. Yes, that was it. The huge animal was crouched low to the ground, its brilliant yellow eyes glowing like a pair of LEDs. A low, guttural growling drifted from the back of its throat as its long tail twitched back and forth.

"Wh - wh - what do we do?" Other Candace hissed, her face suddenly pale.

"I think - think we stay still? Can't they only see us if we move?" Candace whispered out the side of her mouth. The animal hadn't yet moved, but its eyes were still on them, as if it was sizing the situation up. Its ribs were showing through the brightly colored fur, and Candace could almost see the drops of saliva running down its razor-sharp fangs.

Behind the animal, not a hundred feet away, stood the small shed designed for storing the Molecular Re-Atomizer. It was small, but it had a door. With a lock. If they could just reach it time to get inside and bar the door, they'd be safe. If. Candace knew that no human on Earth - or off Earth, for that matter - could ever hope to outrun a tiger. Especially not one intent on hunting.

"It's not a dinosaur!" Other Candace retorted through closed teeth. "I'm pretty sure we're supposed to run!"

The tiger growled again, and crouched even lower, its hind legs coiling up. It was getting ready to leap at them.

"Wait-" Out of the corner of her eye, she realized her duplicate was still clutching the quantum ion amplificator. "Candace!" she hissed. "That thing in your hand - you need to hold down the red button - then count to… ten. Then throw it."

This had a small chance of working. She only hoped Other Candace didn't count too quickly, or else they'd only make the animal madder by punting a small piece of metal at it. Of course, if she counted too slowly… at least then it would be quick and painless.

Other Candace's knuckles were white around the small gadget in her hand, but her thumb moved slowly up and depressed the wide round button.

One, Candace counted. Please don't leap. Two. Please don't leap. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Ni-

Other Candace drew back her arm, and with a last wide-eyed glance in her direction, hurled the small device through the air.

Too soon.

It landed on the ground in front of the tiger, bouncing twice and rolling to a stop. The animal reached out one enormous paw and batted it away. Then it turned back to them, wiggled slightly in place, and jumped.

KRAKOW!

A brilliant rainbow-colored explosion shook the junkyard, sending devastating reverberations through the ground. The shockwave thundering through the air caught the tiger mid-leap and flung it to the ground. Candace couldn't move, or think, or even breath. It had actually worked. That… was amazing.

"NOW!" Other Candace must have realized what the plan was. Candace felt a cold, clammy hand grab her own, and pull her to her feet.

Adrenaline is an amazing thing, and Candace was no stranger to its effects, but this… was on another level. It was as if she'd had rockets strapped onto her. Barely even taking time to breathe, she and her duplicate ran as she'd never run before - never. Behind them, a deafening roar shook through the air, followed by a savage snarling sound that sent chills through her spine.

Just… needed… to get inside… the shed…

They made it. They made it.

Candace's lungs were burning, and her legs felt like two noodles. She just wanted to collapse.

"The door!" Other Candace shouted breathlessly, her face gone as red as her shirt. "Help me shut the door!"

Candace turned back and grabbed ahold of the wooden door's handle. The tiger was running at them in earnest now. With a slight slamming sound, the door snapped shut. Candace snatched up the nearest thing she could lay her hands on, and jammed it into the hinges.

...It was the Molecular Re-Atomizer.

Bang!

A thunderous crash echoed as the wooden door suddenly dented inwards to a frightening degree. The Molecular Re-Atomizer sparked and flashed as the metal it was made of was slowly crunched into something more resembling a pancake.

Bang!

Pieces of wood splintered away from the door, showering down on the tiny room. The Re-Atomizer was almost bent completely in half by this point. It was completely ruined now.

"There's nothing - nothing left to bar the door with!" Candace gasped, looking around the small space. Other Candace followed her gaze, up, down, all around. "What do we do?!"

"How should I know!?" Other Candace shouted. "You're the one with the… thing!"

Bang!

Candace caught a glimpse of orange through a particularly wide split in the door. The hinges were straining, struggling to keep the flimsy barrier in place.

"I don't even have my tools!" Candace shouted, becoming more and more terrified. "And even if I did - there's nothing in here!"

"Then what do we do?!" Other Candace returned.

Bang!

A huge chunk fell away from the top of the door, and a massive hairy paw reached through, wildly waving around in the air. A tremendous roar shook the entire shed. Candace screamed and jumped back, into the far corner. She clung to the nearest thing for support, trying ever so hard to maintain her… consciousness, at least. If she fainted, she was surely a goner.

Bang!

Not that even staying conscious promised much hope right now. They cowered back into the corner of the shed, trying desperately to fit themselves into what little space simply wasn't there. There was only one way out of this shed. No windows - and one door.

Bang!

Something was squeezing her upper arm in vice-like grip, but she couldn't really be bothered to check what it was right now. She tightened her own grip, doing her best shrink down into nothing. Nowhere to run - nowhere to hide. Nothing to do but stand here.

Bang!

An entire plank flaked away, and the door's top hinge fell away from the wall. One by one, the other screws began wiggling their way out. The battered, broken remains of the Molecular Separator snapped directly in half in a shower of sparks, tumbling away from the door. No longer reinforced by the metal, the hinges gave way - and entire door fell inward with a thunderous crash.

A tremendous roaring shook the building, as the smoke slowly settled.

Candace closed her eyes, hoping beyond all hope that it wouldn't hurt too badly.

Then another roar. And a loud, almost buzzing sound. And a yell - a very human yell.

A very Candace yell.

Candace opened one eye, wondering just what in the heck was going on. And then a most unexpected sound could be heard - a loud animal's yelp, followed an extended ear-piercing squealing that gradually faded into the distance. And then… nothing. She opened both her eyes now, straightening slightly. She finally let go of… Other Dimension Candace's arm, sucking a huge breath.

And then someone else stepped inside the room. She was… them. Candace - another Candace. Another Candace with a very long, gray pole in her hand, another Candace panting heavily as if from great exertion.

Another Candace who took a huge breath and lowered her dark sunglasses away from her eyes.

"Care to explain to me what exactly is going on here?"

* * *

A very decidedly normal Candace had walked for about ten minutes straight before coming to a halt and deciding that she was utterly lost. The place she had landed in had at least contained buildings and all sorts of technology (most of it no doubt left there by the Phineas and Ferb of this dimension… so much for that idea that they were outside dimensions altogether? Oh well.) But after ten minutes of walking she had ended up in what seemed to be an open field. A very grey open field, but an open field nonetheless. The greyness felt strangely familiar, but she couldn't place it – not that she cared anyway.

Well, she was lost. That could be both a good thing and a bad thing – it was a good thing because now she couldn't see her other selves anymore, but a bad thing because it was not getting her any closer to being back home. Then again, it wasn't like arguing with her counterparts would have helped her one bit in that regard. She would just have to find this world's Phineas and Ferb. They had to be out there somewhere – she knew her brothers far too well not to realize that when trouble happened, they'd show up sooner or later.

Candace knew that wasn't quite the fairest thing to say. Not after Phineas had gone through so much effort over the past year to help her out. He had even gotten her to admit that she had problems beyond what her psychiatrist might be able to fix, and that spending some time together as brother and sister could be beneficial. Honestly, she knew he wasn't a bad guy. And more so than last time, she also knew that she couldn't avoid her other selves forever. Even if she could find a version of Phineas and Ferb here – which might be a bit of a pipe dream, realistically speaking – she'd still need to get back into contact with her other selves, because she wasn't as selfish to leave them stranded here while she went home.

And honestly… she wanted to be on speaking terms with them. Arguing all the time was the most natural thing to do between such diametrically opposed personalities, but it wasn't going to do them any good. If only they weren't so impossible! Incest Candace for the way she kept looking at her as if she were the bad guy, and then the Other Candace, who had seemed decent at first, but had completely flipped as soon as she'd told them some inconvenient truths. Because apparently any criticism of Phineas would stop both of her counterparts from listening to reason. How had that even happened? She knew that wasn't what she was like when she was younger, and she doubted her other selves had started out as such Phineas-fangirls either.

Candace sighed. Just standing here and thinking to herself wasn't going to do her any good. Maybe she should go back and face them again…

RIPPP!

She had no idea what happened. The one moment she heard a strange ripping sound coming from the sky, as if the sky itself was tearing apart (and that was another strangely familiar thing – maybe it would be good for her to investigate that memory and see if she could figure out anything about this place from it); the next, she found herself lying on the ground with a heavy weight on her. "What?" the heavy weight called out. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"That's a question I should be asking you, considering that you fell on me!" Candace snapped. "For crying out loud, if you're going to fall from the sky, can't you at least announce it first and…"

…and then that voice registered. That incredibly familiar voice.

Every. Single. Time.

Candace groaned loudly, even as she felt her other self get off her back. (This was going to hurt as much as her chin already did.) She got up very slowly, feeling absolutely dizzy, and examined the person before her. Yup, that was her all right. The same orange hair, the same frown on her face. She was dressed in strange light brown robes for some reason, but aside from that, there was nothing surprising there.

The other Candace, however, did not share that opinion. Once she got a good look at normal Candace's face, her eyes went wide and she shrieked. Candace sighed, being half-relieved to finally see a normal reaction at all this craziness but not quite in the mood to deal with this. "Look, I'm just…"

"You're a clone!" Other Candace snapped, and before normal Candace knew it she felt a strange gun pressed against her throat. (Come to think of it, she should have noticed that thing slinging over other Candace's back before.) "How is this possible? I know the cloning factories on Kamino were destroyed! Where did they produce you, the Outer Rim? And who did they possibly think they were going to fool with that ridiculous outfit? Please! You'd never have gotten through any Coruscanti security post with that!"

"I – what in the world are you talking about!" Normal Candace snapped in return, feeling a shiver of fear running up her spine. Her other self wasn't actually going to shoot her, was she? She definitely sounded crazy – well, more crazy than the other weirdos. "I'm not a clone, and I've never even heard of any of those places you mentioned!" Honestly, being called a clone felt slightly offensive – if anyone was the clone, it was probably Other Candace. A defective one, no doubt. "I'm from another dimension!"

"Another… dimension?" Other Candace said incredulously. "What, like hyperspace? What do you take me for, somebody who's never even been off-planet? Now, I'm not going to ask this again…" She pressed the gun closer to Candace's throat. "Where did you come from and who sent you?"

Candace was definitely panicking now. "I'm not a spy!" she exclaimed. "I – look around you, for heaven's sake! I don't know where you think you are, but you're not there anymore!" Was that convincing her? She didn't think it was. "Look, whatever you want to know I'll tell you, all right? I'll tell you as long as you just look around first!"

Other Candace continued to glare, but she did look sideways for a few brief moments. "We're on some grey-ish planet, I assume" she murmured. "What is this place? How did you get me here?"

"I didn't get you from anywhere!" Normal Candace snapped. "For crying out loud, if I was a spy and I'd intended to get you somewhere, wouldn't I be armed? Wouldn't I be standing somewhere else than right on the spot you'd show up, so that you would land anywhere but on me? Which really hurt, by the way!"

Other Candace didn't relent, but from the thoughtful look in her eyes Normal Candace could see she was considering it. Good. This was what she needed. She wished she'd been paying more attention while watching spy movies with her brothers in her youth, but any second in which she wasn't being shot at was undoubtedly a good thing.

"So…" Other Candace said, much softer this time. "If you didn't get me here, who did? And where are we?"

"We're…" Normal Candace tried to come up with a way to explain this to someone who was apparently unfamiliar with the mere concept of other dimensions (which was really stupid, by the way. She might not have travelled through dimensions before, not being a freak show like her counterparts, but at least she'd heard of them.) "I don't know exactly where we are. I was pulled in here like you were. But I am another version of you. I am Candace Flynn." She saw Other Candace's grip on her gun tighten again (and really, her throat was getting sorer with the second) and realized she needed to think of something fast. "Are you… are you familiar with time travel, at least?"

Other Candace frowned. "What, like travelling back to the Republic and trying to stop it from falling? Yes, I've… uh, I've seen something about that on the Holonet. Doesn't sound like a good idea, though. You know, paradoxes and stuff, not to mention all the Force sensitives that would sense that something was off right away – like the Emperor himself, of course."

…Normal Candace had no idea what she was talking about, but 'yes' sounded good. "This is something like that. Like you're going back in time, so every… planet?... that you know is still there, but it's different. And there would be another you there."

Other Candace pondered that for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose there would be," she murmured. "So, you're, like, me from the past? Or from the future?"

"Sort of," Normal Candace replied. "If you'll just go along with me, you'll find that I'm telling the truth. Over there is a city somewhere, and there'll be stuff there you're unfamiliar with that will tell you that you're in an entirely different world – er, universe."

Deep in thought, her counterpart stared in the direction she'd pointed for a long while – long enough to make her nervous – until she finally nodded. "Very well then" she replied, putting the gun down from Candace's throat and allowing her to breathe more freely once again. She almost collapsed from relief, eliciting a chuckle from her counterpart.

"It wasn't even loaded, knucklehead," she said, then grinning even more as she saw Normal Candace's eyes widen. "What, did you really think I sleep with a loaded blaster in my bed? Puh-lease. I keep that one in my nightstand."

"I didn't know you just fell out of bed, though," Normal Candace replied. "You sleep with a gu – er, a blaster?"

"I suppose you wouldn't, if you really had nothing to do with what happened to me," Other Candace mused. "And yeah, I do. Can't be too careful, you know? My husband thinks I'm paranoid too, but we've had far too many close calls over the years. Even if we won't be able to catch a trained assassin off-guard for more than a few seconds with this as they'd be able to tell it isn't loaded right away… but every second counts in those situations."

Normal Candace nodded duly, not sure if she should feel offended or not, until a thought suddenly occurred to her. It would be an awkward question to ask, but since Other Candace wasn't pointing the blaster at her for the moment anyway… "You're married?"

"Yep. Have been for years now." Other Candace gave her a bemused smile. "I guess that means you really aren't a clone designed to replace me. If you don't even know I'm married…" She shook her head, and her shoulders shook weirdly for a moment before going back to normal so fast that Candace figured she must have imagined it. "I mean, Senator Organa and her brother were there, for crying out loud. It was a pretty big deal. If you had been a clone, whoever sent you would have made sure you'd know."

"I see," Candace replied, again not registering much of what her counterpart had said but focusing on the important part: her counterpart was married, in a public ceremony no less, and she could even tell Other Candace wore a wedding ring now that she was paying attention to it. At last, a counterpart with common sense who wasn't hooking up with her own brother. (Okay, so she didn't actually know whether the Candace who had punched her was also with Phineas, but given her ridiculous overprotective attitude regarding him she was prepared for the worst.)

As they continued to walk back towards the town – and Normal Candace hoped desperately that they wouldn't get lost again because even if the blaster wasn't loaded that didn't mean Other Candace's good reflexes wouldn't easily do her in if she got impatient – Candace finally allowed herself to mull over a lot of the other things this Candace had said. She was from a universe in which cloning was normal (well, if Phineas and Ferb had had their way in their youths it would most likely have been in their world as well, but the other Candaces hadn't even considered that she was a clone when she first fell into that pillow pile so even in Crazytown they had never gotten their way on that) and she'd mentioned something about planets, and a lot of different words for common items, such as blasters instead of guns. It all reminded her far too much of those old Space Adventure movies. She hadn't actually watched them the way her brothers had, but between Phineas and Ferb geeking out over them (well, mostly Phineas) she had heard the word 'blaster' mentioned.

This was great. She'd gone from Candaces who were obsessed with their little brother (and for all the wrong reasons, too) to baby-sitting a trigger-happy Candace from outer space.

What else could this day have in store for her? What else could possibly go wrong?

Normal Candace desperately hoped she'd never find out.

* * *

Candace had a bad feeling about this.

That was a thought she generally didn't have lightly, as the phrase was often used among Force sensitives for whom such bad feelings were very serious indeed. But even though she herself couldn't use the Force, she still had a bad feeling right now.

In a way, that was hardly a surprise after she'd just been awoken so rudely. And the fact that she'd faced a clone of herself in the process wasn't the best sign either. She'd let the clone ramble about her silly stories, but the facts spoke for themselves. Someone who looked exactly like her could only be a clone designed to impersonate her. What were the odds of someone looking like her by coincidence? Or, as the impostor had suggested, some form of time travel?

No, that was surely too ridiculous. But even so… the impostor was right that in the circumstances of her waking up she'd clearly been caught as much by surprise as Candace herself was. Circumstances which by themselves were quite unusual, of course, in that she didn't know any Imperial technology that had the capacity to teleport people right into the sky. And then there was the fact that she had landed right on Clone Candace, which was hardly something Clone Candace would do to herself, would she? Granted, it could just be an elaborate ploy to get her to think that there was no way this was a real impersonation, but… it was all just too far-fetched.

And finally, and perhaps most significantly, Clone Candace wasn't acting like a clone would. She was scared and uneasy, in a way that was… well, it was actually a lot like herself. Which made no sense, as no clone would continue the impersonation in front of the one they were supposed to be impersonating. Not in such a convincing way, at least. And as she looked at the cowering woman beside her, Candace just knew that the bad premonition she had wasn't about her.

So, Clone Candace was not the enemy. That was good. What was worse was that Candace still didn't have any idea where she was, and how she'd gotten here. They had been walking through desolate areas for minutes, and although the part of this grey wasteland they were now entering was actually sparsely filled with buildings there was no indication that anyone lived in them. In terms of likelihood of running into humans, they might as well have been in the deserts of Tatooine. A comparison her husband wouldn't have wanted her to make, but it was true nonetheless.

A pang shot through her heart as she thought of him. Had he noticed her disappearance yet? Depending on when she was taken, he might have. But surely if he'd noticed, he could also track her down and get her back. Candace had seen him build a tracking system for his closest friends a couple of years ago, and it had thus far worked flawlessly, incorporating the Force and its ability to sense distant presences into his invention (granted, that had mostly been his brother's contribution.) As soon as he knew she was missing, she knew he would move Tython and Moraband to find her.

"I – we should run into the others any minute now," Clone Candace suddenly spoke up, having apparently misinterpreted something about Candace's expression as skepticism about where they were going. "They may have walked off – it would be just typical of them to do so when I need their help – but I'm sure they're still in the area. This city has to have an other end, after all, and I doubt that they've walked out of it."

Candace figured that it might be best not to point out that Clone Candace had been the one who'd left the city they were going to. There were clearly holes in her story. Not enough to justify the explanation that she herself preferred, but something was up. "So, what do we do?" she said. "Just wait here, or walk around town until we – "

"CANDACE!"

The sound of her name (their name) being yelled from what couldn't be more than two blocks away caught them both off-guard. Candace and Clone Candace simultaneously turned their heads in that direction. "Well, that went easier than I thought," Clone Candace muttered. "Come on, and I'll prove to you that something more is going on here."

Candace still wasn't sure what exactly her clone was trying to prove (unless there was something to the whole 'other dimensions' story after all) but she ran along anyway as Clone Candace dashed through the small alleyways into the direction of the sound. It took them just a few seconds to get there, but when they did, Candace felt her knees suddenly turn into jelly.

Standing in front of them, leaning against the wall, was… her. A woman who looked almost exactly like her, although dressed in a similarly ridiculous outfit to Clone Candace's. She was giving Clone Candace a smug look and didn't seem to realize that Candace was standing behind her in the shadows, which… which was probably a good thing. It allowed her to try to deal with the newest addition to this rapidly unraveling plotline of her life.

The obvious solution might have been that this Candace was another clone, possibly the one behind the fact that she was here now. But that just didn't feel right, there were too many facts that didn't add up already and adding another Candace to the bargain made it feel like an overly complicated solution. First Candace had been scared, whereas this Candace was confident but with a look of strong contempt on her face – nothing like what she'd expected a clone to be like.

Maybe she should drop the whole clone theory. Go back to the basics of what she knew. And that was that she had abruptly ceased to be in her bedroom in her Coruscanti apartment, and that she'd woken up in a grey town somewhere else entirely, where not one but two people with her face were walking around. The time travel theory was beginning to sound increasingly likely.

In all her contemplations, Candace almost missed the new addition to their group talking to Clone Candace. "I figured that you might be here almost right after I woke up," she smugly spoke, glaring at Clone Candace. "And if you're here, the ones who caused this mess can't be far behind. If they know what's good for them, they'd better start fixing it right now."

"I – what are you talking about?" Clone Candace spluttered. "Where did the other me go?"

"The 'other' me?" the newer Candace said. "I'm the only one there is. Unless you had another molecular splitting incident? I wouldn't put it past the boys to put us through all that again."

"A molecular…" Clone Candace muttered sneeringly. It was weird to see such an unpleasant expression on her own face. She stared closely at her other self and shook her head. "Oh for crying out loud – you're a new one, aren't you? I haven't spoken to you before."

"I try to stay out of sight, yes," Other Candace replied. "Especially given the fact that you're living my life, if you hadn't figured that out yet. I don't want to have anything to do with that, thank you very much. It's bad enough for me to have been uprooted from one day to the next to go to a life without my family and Jeremy Johnson – who was my husband, because I put some effort into that relationship rather than make it wither away as you did and…"

Just as Candace was beginning to enjoy getting a chance to reflect on all this insanity (seriously, the time travel theory was beginning to look ever more likely to her – either that, or a couple of people being insane enough to believe they'd time travelled and were in altered realities) Other Candace looked straight at her. "What the – there are two of you? And you're carrying a gun?" She gave Clone Candace-who-might-not-be-a-clone a suspicious look. "Did you put me here to try to get rid of me, and is the gun for intimidation purposes? Because if you're going to force me to uproot who I am again, you might as well shoot me and be done with it! Or better yet, just question my existence – that's cleaner, right? And it's not like you'd care about anything else…"

Clone Candace stared at her. "Look, I don't even know what you're talking about…"

"I figured, and I don't care."

"But we're not… well, whoever you think we are," she finished. "We're from two different dimensions, and there are two more versions of Candace Flynn out there. We don't know how we got here, but we do know we want to get out again and we might need your help to do it. And for the record, I am actually married to Jeremy Johnson. See?" She took off the promise ring that was on her finger and handed it to Other Candace, who examined it with ever increasing amazement (and some frustration).

Maybe, Candace wondered, this was going to work. Maybe they were going to get a reasonable explanation, and this other Candace was going to come with them without her having to use her blaster – because seriously, this whole situation was confusing enough that she would long have pointed it at either of the others if she had only known whom to point it at. She was all for being kind and understanding with other people, like her husband had taught her, but there were limits and potential threats were the clearest examples of that.

And then the other Candace turned fuzzy. It was only for a second or so, but it was enough for Candace to get her hand solidly back on her blaster. "You're a hologram?" she exclaimed. That was a surprise – she'd never seen them look so lifelike before…

Hologram Candace – maybe that was what she was going to call the other anyway, for lack of a better name – shook her head. "Not really – although you're not far off" she responded. "I'm a temporal anomaly."

"A what?" Candace muttered. This day just kept getting stranger.

Hologram… er, Anomaly Candace gave them a strangely unsettling smile. "You'd better sit down. This is going to be a long and very interestingstory."

Candace looked at her clone self, who shrugged and sat down. Curiosity had won the day for her, then – and she had to admit that this was something she too wanted to hear about, even if she was confident that she wouldn't understand all of it. The original version of herself she'd met was strange enough, but this woman? She just seemed… off, in a way. Not unlike that Darthenshmirtz guy whom Perry used to fight.

"It all began a few years ago" Anomaly Candace began, after Candace sat down as well. "I'd been living a happy life with my Jeremy and my kids until one day, my brothers turned up from the past. Do you remember that day, at least?" She frowned. "You were there, right? When we later went back to the future and you tried to bust them to my Mom?" Candace was glad she wasn't looking at her, because she was still stuck on trying to remember whether the name 'Jeremy Johnson' sounded familiar or not.

Clone Candace frowned. "I… I think that might have happened. I'm not really sure."

"Good enough for me" Anomaly Candace said with a shrug. "Anyway, when I saw that my brothers had time travelled I knew that this was my golden chance to go back in time and bust them for the rollercoaster. I went back and tried to do it, only to be cut off by a version of me from an alternate future in which I'd succeeded and turned Danville into a dystopia. I reluctantly gave in and she later disappeared as an anomaly, after which I went back to the future – only it was different."

There was so much there that Candace didn't get, whether it was the 'rollercoaster' or 'Danville' (was it a planet? A town? This other place Clone Candace claimed to be from, or yet another place that Anomaly Candace might be from?) But Clone Candace was still watching her intently (albeit with a pronounced scowl on her face) so she presumed that maybe she was the crazy one, and the things they were discussing here were incredibly normal.

But even if they were, she still wished more than ever that she could be home again.

"You still didn't explain what an anomaly is," she pointed out. "And how can one disappear and the other stay there?"

Anomaly Candace gave her counterpart a very demeaning look, and Candace had a feeling she would have started yelling at her for her stupidity had it not been for the blaster she was holding. She didn't hold back much as it was. "I was thinking that I wouldn't have to explain obvious details that anyone would know," she muttered. "Or at least, anyone who's from our crazy family." She really had a thing against her relatives, didn't she? Candace couldn't even begin to guess where that derived from – of course, she didn't have too many relatives to speak of and make a comparison. But she was prevented from really delving into that by Anomaly Candace proceeding. "An anomaly occurs when you go back in time and prevent the means or the reasons that made your journey back in time possible," she explained. "That is what happened with the me from the bad future, and that… that was what happened to me as well." Candace noticed that she looked genuinely pained now. "I was walking out of the Danville museum with my mother and my daughter, when they disappeared in front of my eyes. And when I got home, my house turned out to be occupied by another family. There was another Candace Flynn in town who had taken over my life, and thanks to my brothers' stupid antics, I didn't even technically exist anymore."

"That's… that's harsh" Clone Candace muttered. "I mean, I knew those experiments were dangerous… but non-existence? What did you do? Did you ask them to reverse it, or…"

Candace felt slightly confused by the fact that apparently Anomaly Candace's brothers were to blame for all this, because she hadn't managed to decipher their precise involvement from the story. Maybe they had tricked Anomaly Candace into doing this 'busting' thing she was talking about earlier. She wasn't sure what that meant – the only way that sounded familiar was from her efforts to bust rebels when she was still a Stormtrooper, but she doubted that Anomaly Candace had been intending to haul her brothers before a court. Unless they were conspiring with the enemy… all this was suddenly making her very glad that she didn't have siblings. (Well, she did have one technical sibling, but that hardly counted.)

"I tried to get them to do their job and fix this, but they wouldn't help me," Anomaly Candace said, gritting her teeth and suddenly flickering in and out again. "They just told me to accept my fate, because I had become a quantum error and that couldn't be undone. And the worst part was that they were right about that at least – no matter how many times I took that museum time machine back, I couldn't fix it. So then I had to settle into a new life – until that one disappeared too, a couple of months later, and I had to travel back in time to fix it. Somehow everything did get fixed, but for whatever bizarre temporal alignment my life was the only thing that didn't return. The only thing I could really do was to settle in the past and hope against hope that those overgrown children would finally stop playing with the fabric of the universe and let me live my life in peace. But apparently, even that simple wish was too much to ask." She stood up and paced around. "And now we're here. Where are we, even? I don't know. How did we get here? I don't know. How will we get out of here? I haven't a clue! The only thing I do know is who got us here – PHI– "

"Okay, okay, I get the picture!" Clone Candace exclaimed, holding her hands up to calm down her deeply distressed other self. "Look, I don't know how we'll get out of here, but I have some idea of some people who might. I… I met a couple of other versions of us already. They're incredibly obnoxious, but they still want to get out of here as much as we do. They might be able to help."

Anomaly Candace nodded thoughtfully. "That sounds useful" she muttered. "Perhaps the Candace that took over my life will even be with them."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Clone Candace muttered. She turned towards Candace, who was still mulling over everything that had been said. "So, do you… trust us now?" she said cautiously. "Do you want to come along with us?"

Candace let out a long sigh. "I might as well," she said. "I mean, I highly doubt you made up that whole story just to fool me. As for you, well, I'm sorry that you have to suffer from… all this. The whole anomaly thing."

Anomaly Candace snorted and stood up straight. "Thanks, I guess." She stood up. "All right then, let's get a move on and find those other us-es. We need to get out of here, and fast."

"Couldn't agree more," Clone Candace said, getting up as well. "But you might want to refrain from telling them anything about what our brothers did. The last time I tried to raise criticism of them, I got glared at and eventually smacked in the face. I have no doubt that they'll come up with all sorts of reasons why they think your story isn't true. I mean, my brothers never did anything like as bad as yours did, but I can still see that there were issues on which they were very slow to grow up. It looks like your brothers never even got there."

Anomaly Candace briefly gave her a strange look, but then she nodded. "They never really stopped their insanity," she muttered. "Always determined to outdo me. Always making me look like an idiot. Always trying to get me involved in whatever madness they were up to this time." Clone Candace looked ready to raise some protest against that, but she stopped when Hologram Candace took hold of her hand. "You actually aremarried to Jeremy, aren't you? You really are the lucky one of us." Her voice sounded awestruck, but also slightly resentful. Candace wondered whether Clone Candace would notice.

"Yes, yes I am," Clone Candace replied. "Especially in comparison to some of the other versions of us we've met. Trust me, you don't want to hear about some of their escapades involving our little brother."

Candace sighed, falling back a little behind her other selves as they began the long walk to… well, wherever Clone Candace was leading them. Two more other selves, apparently. Who undoubtedly had their own life stories. That would be hard, considering that Candace's head was already spinning with this one.

She couldn't believe all these other versions of her – who were apparently from other timelines, but who could co-exist with each other – had so many issues involving her brothers. She wondered what had happened to make them so important in their lives, whereas she didn't even have brothers – well, unless you counted Phineas, of course.

A thought suddenly occurred to her and she stopped in her tracks. Anomaly Candace hadn't mentioned her disruptive brothers' names throughout her narrative, probably thinking that it was self-evident, and she hadn't really thought about asking for it. But when she was shouting near the end, a sound had escaped from her lips before Clone Candace had cut her off. A sound which was suspiciously like the sound which opened Phineas' name. Now, Phineas was someone who she didn't really think of as a brother, but if you wanted to get technical he was, of course, her biological sibling. Maybe he was one of the brothers these Candaces were referring to? And... maybe Ferb could be another?

"You coming, or what?" Anomaly Candace yelled out to her. Candace numbly looked up to realize they'd stopped to wait for her – and wait quite impatiently. She gave Anomaly Candace a look, pointing very unsubtly at her blaster, before hurrying up and rejoining them. Seriously, she was thankful for the distraction – it gave her a chance to stop the ridiculous thoughts in her mind in their tracks.

Ferb hardly counted as a sibling in any scenario, and he would hardly be the obnoxious hooligan which her counterparts had claimed their brothers were. Either he would have been the cold, threatening Sith she'd seen only once on the Death Star, or he could be his quiet yet friendly self. Imagining him as a miscreant who would ruin her life in the way Anomaly Candace's brothers had ruined hers was absurd.

But it was with Phineas that the explanation really became impossible. Because Phineas was so pure, so innocent, so light. His kindness and patience were infinite. She loved him more than anything else in her life and she knew that he could never be the brother her other selves were referring to. Phineas would never do any of the things that these people had apparently done to Anomaly Candace. She was utterly convinced of that fact.

No, any and all similarities between Phineas' name and the miscreant brother, as with all other details about those brothers, were simply coincidences. Candace knew that, and it made her next steps just a little lighter as she walked past her other selves back into town. Whatever had happened to her other selves, Phineas was not the cause – in fact, he might well be the solution. She'd have to talk to him about that after he had found her. Because find her he would. She could be confident of that. She should be confident of that, right?

And yet…

And yet somewhere, Candace Flynn still had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

 **A/N:** _Candaces introduced this chapter:_

 _Candace/Other Candace - or SW Candace: Adult Candace featured in "Phineas and Ferb Star Wars". Used to be only the stormiest of stormtroopers. What happened? Well, it was a funny thing, actually, she-_

 _Anomaly Candace - or OGF Candace: Adult Candace featured in "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" and "Driving Our Sister Insane". The unlucky one to get tackled by Bad Future Candace and attempt to return to the Good Future, only for the meddling with her own past to wipe her timeline and leave her drifting alone, caught permanently betwixt past and future._


	4. First Impressions at the Breaking Point

When she had woken up this morning, 'fighting a ferocious tiger' had not been on the list of things Candace Flynn had been expecting to do. Then again, very few of the things that had happened since had been on that list.

She'd finally, finally allowed her brothers to persuade her to go on a holiday, together with them. It was not something she had really believed in – Doofenshmirtz was still out there, and she knew he could jump on this chance he got to strike – but it had been quiet for a long time and that they were already doing everything they could to prevent a resurgence of Doofenshmirtz's evil.

But apparently they hadn't been doing enough, because she'd been snatched away from her family just on the second day of their trip. Something that was even worse was that apparently, Doofenshmirtz had managed to erase her from existence so that when she got back home, he would be back in charge. She didn't even know how he had managed to take her out of her dimension or if she could have stopped him if she'd stayed back in Danville – especially if it had happened in another dimension – but she knew one thing for sure: he was going down for this.

Which did, of course, mean that she had to figure out a way to get home first, and if the child version of herself (and meeting her had been a surprise, too… this was precisely the reason why surprises were something Candace had never been fond of) was right, a possible third version of herself – or the kid's brothers, even – might be able to help with that.

In any case, there would have to be another version of herself around. Possibly the one from the first dimension, whom she'd met all those years back and who had (along with her version of Phineas and Ferb) helped defeat Doofenshmirtz the first time.

But even with that knowledge, Candace had not been expecting the explosion she'd heard just now, or the tiger, of all animals that she'd had to face. (She wasn't complaining about the latter, though. The oversized cat had gone down far easier than the Goozim she'd originally pictured would have.)

And, finally, finding not one, but two utterly terrified versions of herself in a wooden shed was not exactly in the line of expectations either.

"Care to explain to me what exactly is going on here?"

The two Candaces exchanged glances, as if nervously and wordlessly deciding who should answer her. It was good to see that even after months of no real leads and faced with two people who were, in all likelihood, herself, her ability to inspire fear was unshaken.

"You're… you're outside your home dimensions" the one closest to the shed's door eventually spoke up. "We all are – we are all from different worlds."

Candace rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I got that much from Little Me back here. Trapped outside existence, no one remembers you were there, the whole shebang."

"Oh, for crying out loud – will you stop calling me that?" her child self complained, in a high-pitched voice Candace never remembered having when she was that age. "I told you I'm a teenager! You can't just go on dismissing me like that!"

Candace was about to remind her just who exactly was in charge here when she remembered the presence of her other selves – versions whom she couldn't just place by their age differences. "All right, then," she acquiesced. "We'll use a numbering system instead. You can be Candace One, I'll be Candace Two, and as for you two… which one fell in here first?"

Once again, the Candace closest to the door was the one to speak up, as the other one looked puzzled for whatever reason. "I did," she replied. "I fell in here a while ago, and then I managed to track down Other Candace when the new rift opened."

Candace (should she think of herself as 'Candace Two' now? Possibly.) nodded. "Very well. Then that means you're Three, and the other one will be Four."

The other Candace – Candace Four – spluttered. "Hang on a second, who do you think you are to just barge in and tell us what we should be called?"

"I'm the woman who saved you from that tiger" Candace Two replied calmly. "And incidentally, also the one whose question you still haven't answered! And if you two don't get it, let me spell it out for you: how did we get here, what is this junkyard we're standing in, and how are we going to get out again!"

"Wait," Candace One timidly spoke up, "didn't I already, you know, kind of answer that first one? We got here because I turned on that Do-Over thingy in Vanessa's Dad's apartment."

"The Do-Over-Inator… wait, you're from then?" Candace Three said, clearly taken aback. "You're from 2017?"

Candace One shook her head in confusion. "No – it's 2038? I wasn't even born yet in 2017."

"Fascinating, absolutely fascinating," Candace Two snidely replied. "But what I want to know is, how could Doofenshmirtz's invention somehow send all of us to this place, from across all these different dimensions? And once again, does anyone here have any clue on how we get out?"

Candace Three shook her head. "I have no idea how we got here" she said. "I… I haven't really focused on that question, to be honest. But I do know how we can get out again – or at least, I have an idea for it. I can't guarantee that it'll work."

Candace Two frowned at that. She had really been hoping to get some clarity about the whole 'being transported to another dimension' business, especially if it was something that he could just do to them again once they got home. But then again, Candace Three was right that it wasn't really the main focus.

"Fair enough. I suppose that is the most important thing to do – and when we get home, I can just track down Doofenshmirtz and get the answers straight from the source." There was no way he would be able to hide himself once he'd taken over Danville again, whether it was through her disappearance in the past or in the present, and she relished the thought of that confrontation she'd been waiting for so long.

Candace Four, who had been fairly quiet thus far, looked up at her as she said that. "Hang on… Doofenshmirtz… aha!" She grinned. "I knew I recognized those glasses from somewhere! You're from the Second Dimension!"

Candace Two raised her eyebrows at hearing the unfamiliar words and yet recognizing their source from a distant memory – the only memory she had of another version of herself. "Ah. You're the one who tried to get me to hook up with Johnson, aren't you?" Strange, that that would be the first thing that occurred to her when thinking of the other Candace she'd met at just fifteen, but largely it had been the only thing of any significance that her other self had managed to pull off, even if calling it 'significant' at all was a bit of a stretch.

"Wait," Candace Three asked, seeming to grow nervous again. "You and Jeremy, uh, you're together now? Because of Four?"

Honestly, Candace Two hadn't been expecting such… frivolous questions out of her other selves either. Was her potential marital status really the main thing they were going to focus on right now? But then again, what was turning out as expected today?"No?" she said scornfully, still opting to answer on the off-chance that there was a point to this line of questioning. "When would there be time for such worthless pursuits? It was a pointless, meddlesome effort, and doomed to failure from the start."

Candace Four blinked. "You're… welcome?" she muttered. "Well, I suppose that answers that question." It was a sentence that didn't make much sense, but Candace Two supposed that was bound to happen when interacting with inter-dimensional versions of yourself for a prolonged period.

"You broke up with Jeremy?" Candace One exclaimed, so loud and outraged that it almost made Candace miss seeing Candace Three whisper something to Candace Four, and the latter then whispering something back. Her lip reading wasn't as good as it used to be when she'd gotten more practice, but she thought it was something like 'I thought it was a good idea at the time'? Nah, she definitely needed practice. That didn't make any sense.

Candace Two shrugged. If there had been a point to the question, it was certainly not a worthwhile one. "I have a Tri-State Area to take care of and a family to protect, and as long as I am stuck here both of those things are in danger – these useless questions aren't going to help with any of that." She saw Candace One about to issue another protest, and quickly silenced it with her staff. "We're all going to focus on what's important now – so if you are done looking like you're about to faint without actually fainting, and if you two are done whispering to each other, then we'll get a move on. We've already been here for a couple of hours and I don't know when the sun sets in this place – or if there's a sun out here at all – but we need to be home before then."

"If we're lucky, you might be," Candace Three muttered. "Come on, let me get the things I need and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about."

As the Candaces watched her rummage through the scrap piles in front of them and get to work – Candace One with confusion (as far as anything was visible on her face that wasn't shell-shock) and Candace Four with resignation – an entirely indifferent Candace Two figured that if they were going to be hopping amongst dimensions, she probably ought to try and prepare herself as much as possible for whatever she might encounter - starting with asking her original counterpart (hmm, it was probably too late to have her swap names with Candace One now) a question. She did recall said counterpart's version of Perry being pleasantly capable, at least back then. "Four. Is your platypus still someone we can rely on to have our backs in a fight?"

Candace Four looked weirdly at her for a moment, and then chuckled in a distinctly forced manner. "Oh, you know Perry, I guess? Well, if that platyborg of yours got back to normal and stayed that way, at least."  
Candace Two nodded. "Married to his job, still occasionally fighting evil even though he's been retired for years now. His health has been declining a little over the past months, though. He's trying to hide it, but Phineas, Ferb and I have been wondering how much longer he's got left. They're already working on a natural de-aging machine, but even if that'll delay his death it won't keep him alive forever."

Candace One frowned, blinking rapidly as she had apparently regained enough of her senses to concentrate on something else other than Johnson, who was… apparently a big deal to her.. Which was strange, because she couldn't remember his fighting capacities being any more than average in her own dimension?

"Wait," One said, "when you say Perry, do you mean Phineas and Ferb's smelly platypus Perry?"

Candace Four looked over at her. "Oh yeah, right. I'd forgotten that you wouldn't know… or know anymore, I suppose, if you're really from the end of that summer. Surprise, surprise: Perry is a secret agent who fights Vanessa's mad scientist Dad. That's where he sneaks off to every day. Or at least he used to, because in my time Dr. Doof has long retired from evil. He never did have the talent for it that Two's world's version of him did."

Candace Two was about to speak up that that was an incredibly naïve thought for her counterpart to have and that any Doofenshmirtz would always be up to something, but Candace Three spoke up before she could. "Perry is a - a secret agent in your world?"

"Yes, yes he is" Candace Four replied, frowning as she walked over to her other self. "I can't believe you don't know that…" Four stopped talking for a moment and stared at Three as if some great revelation had just occurred to her. "Unless he never told you," she said, sounding thoughtful. "Is he still alive in your dimension, too? At an... unusual age for a platypus?"

Candace Three frowned as well. "Yes, yes he is… but that doesn't mean he's a secret agent. That's - that's ridiculous. You're joking, right?"

Candace Four rolled her eyes. "Oh yes. That's ridiculous. And being in … being close to Phineas isn't."

"Not so loud!" Candace Three hissed, freezing up where she stood – which lead to her almost burning her hand with a blowtorch. "And I thought you… well, didn't you suggest… I don't mean to imply things, but…"

Candace Four sat down next to her and rolled her eyes again, and when she spoke it was so soft that only Candace Two's lip reading skills (she really hadn't interrogated a prisoner for too long) allowed her to get the gist of the conversation. "Yes, yes I did. And I didn't say anything, did I? I wasn't going to spill the secret. Have a little faith in me."

Candace Three gave her a look. "I can't afford to have faith. Not on this, and not here."

Candace Two didn't have the slightest idea why being close to Phineas was a big deal or something to be embarrassed about, so she decided to file it off in the 'irrelevant to the mission' compartment of her brain. Honestly, a lot of things she'd observed here fit with that. And since she didn't want to see her other selves come to blows with each other – infighting was never a good thing when it came to achieving a purpose in a timely manner – she stepped forwards.

"All right, break it up," she ordered. "Three, is your project done yet?"

"I think it almost is," Candace Three replied. "I just need to add a few of those boxes and we should be able to create the most feasible scenario for us to get back into our home dimensions. Or at least, out of this place."

Candace One also stepped closer and frowned. "What in the world are you even doing?" she wondered. "And how? Are you a mechanic or something?"

Candace Three turned to her and smiled. "I'm doing the same things Phineas and Ferb would do, because I can do the same things Phineas and Ferb can do. The inventing gene is in my blood, as it is in yours – you apparently just don't know it yet."

"That's what you think" Candace Four murmured, almost too soft for anyone to pick up. Candace Three definitely didn't notice, even though Candace Two took note of it. There was some resentment there. Did her other selves really think this was the kind of thing they should be worrying about? Here? Now? Candace shook her head in confusion. .

"I…" Candace One stammered. "You're kidding, right? I can't do any of that stuff! I mean, for crying out loud, they can build rollercoasters, time machines… heck, I couldn't even put a basic track for a rollercoaster together, let alone do it to the extent my brothers can, making it so huge and fancy and in such a short period of time." She groaned. "They always have to better than me, no matter what I do. And now you're trying to tell me you can do all their crazy things too?"

"Phineas and Ferb aren't trying to be better than us" Candace Four softly corrected her. "Nor are the things they build crazy."

"Thank you, other me" Candace Three chimed in. "And yes, yes I can. I could do all this until I was, what, seven years old? And then my desire to start busting my brother kicked in because every time Mom walked in as I'd built something, it disappeared, but that never happened with Phineas. The busting thing took over my urge and my ability to build, but that doesn't mean it wasn't still there – it just needed to come out again. Like it did with me, when I travelled to this non-dimension at your age, and like it will happen to you. You just need to get through that mental dam in your mind, and it'll make sense to you."

Candace Four cleared her throat. "Yeah, that's not how it works."

"Didn't you say you'd picked up enough from Phineas to be able to help him out?" Candace Three said. "You obviously still have the inventing gene, perhaps to a lesser extent than my brothers and I do, but it's there." She shook her head. "But that's something we can talk about as soon as we actually get out of this place. And that's something I think we should be able to do very soon, 'cause I'm done." She put in place a last screw and stepped back, finally allowing her counterparts to really see what she'd put together.

It was… something. A collection of what looked a lot like stacked boxes (which was strange) but with some sort of cone on top and an antenna on top of that. Attached to it was a smaller, though far more complex looking device. Whatever this whole thing was supposed to be, it did have a vague resemblance to some of the gadgets she'd seen Dr. Baljeet tinkering about with from time to time - though on a considerably larger scale. And although she was nowhere close to being a mechanic, she had a hunch that what her counterpart had managed to put together was unusual indeed. "So what is this thing supposed to do?" she demanded.

Candace Three didn't answer at first, as she cautiously examined her handiwork. "It's a space-time ripper" she finally said. "A fairly crude one, of course, but given all the available scrap metal I was able to make something from it nonetheless. I… I'm not sure but I think it should work."

"Not answering my question," Candace Two said severely. "What does it do?"

"Besides, you know, bringing us home" Candace One added.

Candace Three sighed, as if she really couldn't believe that she needed to explain this to other versions of herself. "The space-time ripper uses the cold fusion reactor to rip a hole into the outer layer of this non-dimensional space" she explained. "If I had Pizzazium Infinionite to power it, I could pinpoint us right back to my own dimension, and possibly even to each of yours. But with this we're only going to be able to make a breach into dimensional space at a place where the layer is weakest. I don't know in what dimension we would end up, but it would probably be a place where they actually have the Pizzazium I need so that I can power up the machine fully – or build a new one, as it turns out – and bring us back to our homes. Of course, it's entirely possible that once we get there, we'll run into yet another version of ourselves, or Phineas and Ferb, and they might be able to provide me with the Pizzazium I need."

Candace Two frowned. "You don't sound very convinced that it'll work."

Her other self hesitated. "I… I think it will. But I created this in a hurry and it's not quite the same as it was the last time, when Phineas and Ferb and I built it together…" She shook her head. "It'll be fine. I know it will be."

"You're not exactly instilling us with confidence here" Candace Two said. "It looks like it could be functional, I'll give you that, but I wonder whether you can actually pull this off all by yourself."

"It'll work," Candace Three repeated, appearing to even take some sort of personal offense at the last words. (Pride. The leading cause of failure for any soldier's mission.) "It might take a while, but it will work. This is my life – my passion. How would you feel if someone started questioning your capacity to take down your Doofen-something guy?" She shook her head, as Candace Two mulled on those words, which had come true far more than Candace Three would probably think. All those incompetents who thought she was too young to pull this off, who had doubted her to her face so many times and then presumed they could still take charge once even they couldn't deny that Doofenshmirtz had shown his ugly face again…

Her counterpart noticed that Candace Two had deemed the conversation complete and turned to Candace Four. "Candace, you know I can do this, right?"

Their other self hesitated briefly but nodded anyway. "I… yes" she replied. "If any one of us is going to pull this off, you're going to be the one to do it."  
Candace Two frowned. "I suppose we won't know until we try it" she murmured. "All right, if you back her. But just so you know – I'm holding both of you responsible in case this blows up in our faces."

Candace Three rolled her eyes. "I really appreciate that confidence vote." She knelt down next to her machine and located a screen and a button next to it. "You might want to stand back, by the way."

"Wait, you're going to trigger this thing now?" Candace Four asked. "Shouldn't we, like, wait until the other us gets back first? As annoying as she might have been, she is a version of us, and we can't just strand her here. Not to mention that we don't know whether more of us won't show up."

"That's certainly possible," Candace Three replied. "But it'll take the machine some time to warm up again anyway, so using it for a test now should be all right." She glanced at her other selves. "Are you ready?"

Candace One nervously looked at the contraption in front of her. "I don't feel ready" she muttered. "But I suppose we can't keep hesitating forever." Candace Four nodded, and finally Candace Two did the same, although she took a step back and carefully continued to inspect the situation. If this whole thing would go wrong, it would not sneak up on her.

Candace Three pressed the button, and for a moment it looked like the space-time ripper was actually coming to life. The engine of what she had called the cold fusion reactor roared, and it looked like the antenna was actually doing something. It was, wasn't it? A powerful beam was shooting out, and…

And it wasn't right.

From what little she'd managed (and bothered) to follow earlier, the machine was supposed to be achieving a rift right around now, wasn't it? Then why was the ray bouncing off the skies? This was looking bad. This was very, very bad. The lower parts of the ripper were rattling up a storm, as if they might tear themselves apart at any moment.

"It – it's not achieving enough power to break through!" a frantic Candace Three explained to the three faces that were all looking at her with concern. "Maybe… maybe if I turn it up a little more… and I increase the focus by 0.23 percent…"

"You're not turning up anything!" Candace Two snapped. "That thing looks seriously unstable! Let's get out of here before it…"

The sound of rumbling inside the machine stopped her in her tracks. Even Candace Three, who had been yanking at the controls, now looked terrified and followed the others as they broke into a run. Candace Two wasn't sure where they were running towards and how far they would need to run, but anything would be better than continuing to hang around here.

The next moment, a large explosion rumbled across the area. Candace Two instinctively fell down to the ground, folding her knees up into her chest and tucking her head down as low as possible - incidentally bowling over Candace One in the process.

Even though it all happened in a couple of seconds, the sound waves that were rumbling over her were nearly thick enough to cut through with her , she could hear debris fall out of the sky – the most dangerous part of an explosion. That lasted a few seconds, and then that, too, was over.

Candace Two got to her feet and looked around, checking herself for injuries in a way that showed as good as anything how routine this had become to her over the years. (Well, perhaps not especially recently, but it was still ingrained in her psyche.) At least her staff was still around, so she grabbed that right away. Next, she saw that Candace One was also getting up, apparently none the worse for being pushed down to the ground like that. A little bit further away, Candace Four was sitting up and rubbing her clearly bruised head. And Candace Three…

Wait, where was Candace Three?

Candace Two tightened her hold on her staff and looked around. Her reckless counterpart was nowhere to be seen, but she could guess where the other woman had gone. She paced back to the crash site, hearing Candaces One and Four slowly follow her. Sure enough, Candace Three had gone back to the remains of the space-time ripper and was rummaging through the wreckage.

"I… I don't understand!" she wailed. "I must have made some kind of miscalculation… the barrier of non-dimensional space was too strong… but it worked twenty years ago…" She looked up, confused. "This wasn't how it was supposed to be."

"It better not have been," Candace Two replied sternly.

"I can fix this, though! There might be something else in the shed – I didn't think there was earlier, when my other self and I were locked up there and we needed something to fight the tiger with, but maybe there's something I overlooked and I can…"

"No," Candace Two cut her off, "you won't. For crying out loud, you nearly blew us up! We could have been killed! Were you out of your mind, to start messing with those dangerous explosive machines like that?"

Candace Three bristled. "I've worked on this before, you know" she replied. "I must simply have made a small error, and…"

"If this is what you call making small errors, then I'm not going to allow you to make any large ones" Candace Two coolly replied. "From this moment on, I'm in charge. And you're not getting close to any scientific equipment again."

"Hang on, weren't you already in charge?" Candace Four mused. A poke of the staff against her belly and a dark glare from underneath her sunglasses made it clear to her childish other self that the joke wasn't appreciated. "All right, all right!"

"Good to see you're all ready to listen," Candace Two said. "I want us to get back home before nightfall, and even if that's not going to happen we can at least try until we wear ourselves out. That's why I've picked a specific direction in which we're going to walk and that's that way." She pointed east… or west, possibly. She had lost all sense of direction in this dimension, and the needle of the compass she carried in her utility belt was just spinning about randomly anyway, but it was all fine. Her experience as a resistance leader would guide her.

"So, wait, your plan is just to start walking in one direction until we find something?" Candace Three replied. Really, did she have such little room for self-reflection that she was already getting in the way of her other self who was clearly far more capable at handling these things than she was? "That's… that's stupid!"

"I'm not taking any lessons on what is and isn't stupid from the woman who tried to blow us up" Candace Two said. "Come on!"

She stepped forwards, and behind her the others were slowly but surely beginning to follow. Candace One first, of course, as she'd already stuck around with her the longest, and then Candaces Three and Four. She glanced over her shoulder and felt a grim sense of satisfaction. They weren't happy, no, but they would follow her. (Or get left behind.)

Her thoughts had already trailed to what they could possibly hope to find along this road – and she had no idea what it could be but it had to be something, perhaps even a rift they could just get through in the same way they had all arrived here – when something on the horizon caught her attention. It was a small group of people, which was eccentric enough. But what was really unusual was that they all had bright orange hair.

More Candaces, she thought to herself. Of course.

Well, she'd just have to deal with it. It wasn't like she didn't lead larger groups in every-day command of the Resistance, and – most importantly – there was no other alternative. Candace Three, who had fancied herself to be a scientist, was clearly delusional, and none of the others had offered up any alternatives to help them get home. She doubted that these new arrivals would come up with something. And with that, too, she would deal. She'd take charge of the situation and keep it, because she was the only one she could trust to do so.

Candace Two stopped and surveyed the situation among the group that was following her, thus far. Candace One looked tired, Candace Three was annoyed, and Candace Four was just uncomfortable. It wasn't the best team of Candaces she could have hoped for, but they would have to do. And most importantly, they would learn to accept her leadership, and so would the newer ones.

"So," she spoke up, shooting a glance over at the approaching Candaces. "Do any of you know these people?"

* * *

If you'd ever asked Candace what she thought she'd be doing this fall, to celebrate the end of the hottest part of the year - she'd have said anything, anything, but this.

The littlest Candace - Candace One, as that other Candace had told them to call her - shifted back and forth on her feet, looking incredibly uncomfortable. Well, good for her - everyone was uncomfortable. The Candace with the sunglasses was just an uncomfortable sort of person, apparently, and she insisted on thrusting that uncomfortable-ness onto everyone else. It really wasn't helping the situation, but considering that she had just saved their lives from the tiger (and also looked a little... intimidating in general), Candace hadn't really found it in herself to stand up to the woman.

For goodness' sake, every time Candace looked over at her, she found herself looking up at her, which was something she hadn't had to do with really anyone since, like, high school. It was more unnerving than it had any right to be.

She'd declared that she was 'Candace Two' and that she was also in charge of the leading their small group back to safety. Which was fine and all, but even despite that, Candace got a creeping sense that 'Candace Two' had no idea what she was doing, even with the fancy secret-agent sunglasses. Still, whatever. Her other self had beaten that tiger and towered up over Candace's own six feet and four inches... she wasn't taking any chances.

"Do any of you know these people?" Candace Two asked sharply, looking at each of them in turn as the other group approached - the group containing what appeared to be three more Candaces, including one that was dressed as if she'd been torn out of somewhere long, long ago. Which was great - time travel was just what they needed now, to make this whole situation even more complex and confusing. As if the fact that there was a teenage version of herself already here wasn't bad enough.

She refused to let herself worry about what might happen if said teenaged Candace were to ever catch wind of anything going on in her older selves' lives. Not only were there potential spatio-temporal consequences at play, but there was also... well, it was her. As a teenager. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots.

Candace Four shot her a sideways glance and rolled her eyes, projecting a remarkable amount of carelessness about the situation. "Yeah, me and, uh, Three? over here… I think."

Candace also rolled her eyes in response, trying to match the other woman's attitude to the best of her ability. "I mean," she said, thankful that her voice had finally stopped trembling. "We met a Candace, who ran off on us after I, uh, had an altercation with her." Uh oh. It suddenly occurred to her that if this was that Candace back again... the Candace who knew about Four and her and their brothers and... what was she going to do with that information? It hadn't exactly made her happy, and then Candace had gone and given the woman a reason to hold a grudge against her and now she was back and... "I don't know who the other ones are." The tremor was painfully obvious in her words again. She sidled over a step, all the while telling herself that, no, she wasn't hiding behind Candace Four, that was silly.

"Well, that's just great," Candace Two muttered darkly, thankfully not seeming to notice anything. "More of me to worry about. Because my job isn't hard enough already." She banged the end of that staff of hers on the ground, grumbling more inaudible things under her breath.

The group of other Candaces had drawn close enough to talk with by this time. Was it strange that Candace was becoming increasingly accustomed to using her name in the plural sense? Probably. Everything in her life was strange, after all, so why not this too? A dull sense of foreboding welled up in her gut, and she kicked at the ground mindlessly, staring hard into the tiny clouds of carbon dust kicked up.

"Alright, listen up." Candace Two was talking loudly again, wildly swinging her staff around in the air like she was trying to lift off the ground with it. "I'm in charge here. Got that? Good. And I'm also the one who assigns the numbers." She paused and pointed at each of the new Candaces in turn. "You're Candace Five, you're Six, and you're Seven. Got it? Good. Meet One, Two, – that's me – Three and Four. It's great to meet you all. Now we need to be going." She didn't bother to specify exactly where they 'needed to be going'. Well, that was just the rub, wasn't it?

They were hardly ten feet away at this point, plenty close enough for Candace to recognize the newly-christened Candace Five. She was the Candace that had… overstepped her boundaries just a little bit, and consequently gotten what she deserved. There was still a red mark on her face.

It does serve her right, Candace insisted to herself, even as she was trying very hard not to look at the other woman. Especially after what Other Candace - Candace Four - told me about her. Not that it wasn't immediately obvious.

Candace Five glared at her, then smiled in a smug way that had a distinct unsettling effect. Maybe Candace Five had deserved the blow, then, but... what now? What had she done? The foreboding was back, and she resumed staring hard into the ground, able to all but feel the gaze still burning into her. What if Candace Five told everyone? What if she'd already told those other two Candaces?

It wasn't like before. There was no numerical advantage now, only her and Four against the world. And Two had the stick and it would be so easy... she swallowed hard, feeling a curious, logic-defying amalgam of hot and cold stirring up in her gut, making her queasy in the intensity with which it churned.

"I'm not hearing any input!" Candace Two remarked flatly. "I'm taking this to mean that you have none, then." Two turned and pointedly glared at Candace through her dark lenses. "Which is fine with me - I don't need any more of this explosion junk. I've had quite my fill of that already." Candace shrank back meekly, too worried by Five's presence to risk trying to cross the woman in black.

"I'm sorry?" The weirdly-dressed Candace - Six - replied. "Who put you in charge?"

Candace Two lowered her sunglasses slightly, stepping forward, closer to Candace Six, almost getting in her face, towering over her by what was nearly a foot, easy. "I put me in charge. And just because you've got the whole… pajamas thing going on there, that doesn't mean you can just override me like that." Candace Two shrugged and pushed her glasses back. "Or you can try, if you want." She tapped her staff a few times on the ground, as if waiting for some sort of opponent to attack.

To her credit, Six didn't look much frightened, at least not on the outside, but she still grunted something in reply and seemed to back down from her objections, which seemed enough to satisfy Two.

"It's - it's alright," Candace Four spoke up from beside her. "Two is… probably the best to be in charge anyway. She did just single-handedly beat off a tiger, after all."

"She did what?" Candace Five demanded, sounding stunned for a moment before shrugging it off with a surprising sort of ease. "Oh, whatever - I really don't care about that. Tigers, pah. What I do want to know is if she - if you - are normal, even if only by the most generous definition of the term. You married?"

"What is it with you and your other selves and this obsession with marriage?" Candace Two asked coolly, her tone as cold and uncaring as ice. "Right now I need to get home - and that's what I intend to do, with or without you - but if you're coming, then leave your stupid questions behind, you understand?"

"I'll agree with you there," the heretofore quiet Candace who'd been dubbed 'Seven' said. "But I'll bet you anything that we won't be able to get home with those - those irresponsible meddling little-" She grit her teeth and cut herself off. "Ugh. This is why I left them behind and never looked back."

"That's okay," Candace Five said, a frightening amount of smugness in her words. "Honestly I don't care that much whether you're married or not. It's still normal enough for me. This is gonna be fun."

Candace Seven rolled her eyes - and fizzled.

Like, quite literally, fizzled and flickered, rapidly appearing and disappearing for a fraction of a second, before everything went back to normal. Candace blinked, momentarily distracted from her worries, sure she had to be seeing things. What was-

"Whoa- what was that?" the little Candace One squeaked, asking the question that Candace herself dared not. "You just, like, got all fuzzy for a second? What that, like-"

Candace Seven scowled. "Yes, I know. Whoo, the temporal anomaly occasionally pops in and out of existence! Such fun it is."

"Okay, listen up, this has been very nice-"

"Wait, you're a temporal anomaly?" Candace blurted out, unable to stop the exclamation. "That's… whoa."

Candace Seven shot her the dirtiest of looks, and she shrank back under the withering gaze. "Yeah, real nice. Let's all jump on the case of the woman who doesn't exist, and just wants to have a life. Not even her own life, because apparently even that's just too much to ask."

"-okay, listen up, people!" Candace Two said, her voice tipped with growing exasperation. "I'm sure you'd all love to sit around and chitchat all day, but I've got things to do. And dictators to depose. I'm gonna begin enforcing my plan in exactly three seconds - and as you all know, that plan is gonna be 'start walking in that direction until we hit something'. If you don't wish to do that - then you'd better come an alternative. Quickly." She frowned. "Does anyone recognize this place, to provide a second opinion from hers?"

"Well, how about we discuss this first," Candace Five said icily, glaring at Candace Four. "Because there's one of us that's not everything she appears to be. Oh no - I forgot. Make that two." She smiled mockingly, feigning an expression of warmth.

A cold dart of fear crept inside Candace as her other self continued speaking. She felt as if her limbs freezing up, as if the world itself was screeching to a halt around them, every eye drilling into her, every ear demanding some explanation of her deeds.

"Here's a thing I think is rather important for all of you to know. Ready? Might wanna brace yourselves, 'cause I know a bit of warning would've helped me, though I got none. That these two, right here, are complicit in committing incest. With our little brother. You know, Phineas."

Candace felt her face turning very, very red, her throat constricting and squeezing the breath up and out of her lungs. She instinctively took a step back, her mind dimly hunting for a direction in which to flee, to run, to escape the judgemental looks, the rejection, the condemnation, the scathing remarks that were sure to follow.

She couldn't actually run, though. There was that tiger, and if she ran off alone, it could... it could kill her. She was trapped here, standing here, frozen in place, utterly alone in a sea of critical eyes, stabbing into her soul as if they could truly see everything that lay within it. Somewhere, her ears dully registered a crash happening off to the side somewhere, as Little Candace, her complexion gone as white as a sheet, backed into some piece of debris lying on the ground and collapsed in a heap on top of it.

"In fact, I know that her, Four, actually had children with him," Five continued unabated, the smugness practically dripping from her voice by this point. "And you probably did too, because why else would you think that punching me is something - something you should do? You did, didn't you? I knew it. Did Four put you up to that? I bet she did, didn't she?"

"If I wanted to punch you, believe me, I'd be perfectly happy to do it myself – especially if you keep talking like this," Four muttered almost inaudibly.

Candace was now wishing that she'd done much more to the other woman than a (relatively) light blow to the side of her jaw. Maybe a – or two – black eyes would've been more appropriate. But she hadn't then, and it would never work now – not when she could hardly breathe or move at all, much less draw back her arm and put any meaningful sort of force behind it.

Everyone was staring. Everyone was staring, Little Candace was lying the ground looking like she was hyperventilating, and there was no escape.

Candace Seven was staring, her eyes wide, and mouth agape. "Oh, this is just great!" she spat, throwing up her arms and flashing in and out of existence again. "What sort of freak show is this? Oh, I've had it about up to here with those boys, I swear!" She stopped momentarily, eyes flashing. "Is this true?"

Candace Five nodded and shot a significant glance at Candace Four. "Of course it is. I should know - I spent like a week in her place. And she got to taste the normalcy that is my life, and then decided to go and lecture me on how she was right and I was wrong. Who's wrong now?"

Candace's brain had long since ceased to process what was happening, to register anything or the barrage of hateful words directed at her. She hoped – she prayed, she begged that the ground of the non-dimension would open up and swallow her alive.

It didn't.

"It is of no concern, and of no importance, what you all, any of you, do with your lives, incest or no." Candace Two muttered loudly. "Because right now, our top priority is getting home, and compared to that, nothing else matters. Do you all catch my drift?" Her voice grew dangerously low. "I would highly recommend that you just can it and suck it up until we're home again. Then you're free to debate this with each other all you want."

"Wait a second…" Candace Six said slowly, looking as if she was deep in thought. "Your brother? Like… technical brother? You did say Phineas?"

Candace Five's eyes danced. "Exactly. I couldn't believe it at first either. But it's all true - too true, honestly."

"Okay, look here," Candace Four said darkly, stepping forwards. "What I decide to do with my life is none of your business. It wasn't then, it isn't now, and do you really-"

"Oh, oh, oh, that's what you think isn't it?" Five retorted. "But there's three of us married to Jeremy now, and that means you two are outnumbered. Which goes to show exactly who's in the right and the wrong in this - I mean, if you couldn't see it before, which you obviously couldn't."

"I - I -" Candace finally stammered, trying to reach out to some words to defend herself. None would come. There was no defense, was there?

Candace Seven flickered again. "Well, this is just great, isn't it? Geez. When you said that our other selves were 'obnoxious', I wasn't expecting this. I would have appreciated a warning, but I guess I can't trust even myself anymore, hm? Thanks a lot for that."

"Will you all listen to me and just drop this subject?" Candace Two interjected. "Did you not hear what I just said? I would appreciate not having to waste energy over something as completely unimportant as this. Have you no discipline at all?"

A dark look shot across Five's face for a moment as she glanced over her shoulder at Seven, but she shook her head and it cleared. "Well, what do you have say now, mes? Not much, I see." She gestured back at Candace Seven and Candace Six. "The universe has spoken - my relationship - the normal one - officially has the majority. And the majority rules."

"Hang on," Candace Six said. "I - I'm not married. Not to any 'Jeremy', I mean? I'm not even sure who that is? Is it someone I'm supposed to know, because..."

Out the corner of her eye, Candace saw Candace Two push her glasses further up her nose and impatiently bang her stick on the ground, and despite the sunglasses obscuring her eyes, the hard, thin line that was her mouth frowned continually deeper as time went on. But she wasn't really paying attention to the self-appointed leader anyway.

"What?!" Candace Five exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me this before? What is - then who, exactly, are you married to?"

"Excuse me?" Candace Six returned, raising her eyebrows a little, looking a little taken aback by the woman's tone. "I've been married to Phineas Fletcher for the last-"

Something about the name – her brother's name – drilled its way into Candace's subconscious, and she blinked in shock. Seriously, one more minute of this and her brain was just going to be – to be utterly shot. She was going to end up like Little Candace, who'd dragged herself up off the ground and was now sitting dejectedly on the chunk of machinery she'd tripped on, head in her hands, looking a bit like she'd just seen her best friend murdered in front of her eyes.

"What?!" Candace Five almost shouted, whirling around. "Why - you - how could you?! And I thought you were a normal one! Ugh - you people disgust me!"

Candace Four smirked. "Welcome to the club, Six . It's nice to meet you." Even more than Six's announcement, this was a remark that made Candace sit up (at least metaphorically) and take notice. How? How? How was the woman so... confident? Unless she was just really good at talking over her own feelings somehow, but...

It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense, really. Four was just... she was standing there, hardly a single shiver in her voice, and here was Candace herself, still having not said a single word, her mouth feeling as if it'd been stuffed with cotton, her tongue trapped in place despite all her efforts to move it, her heart beating so loudly and erratically in her ears it seemed like the others surely must be able to hear it.

And here was Four, just...

"I don't know-" Candace Six started, a look of confusion contorting her features. "I mean, Phineas is…"

"He's your brother!" Candace Seven and Candace Five snapped at almost the same time.

"I mean, technically, yeah," Six continued, raising her eyebrows even higher. "If you wanna go think about it like that, but really, when was the last time you ever thought of him that way? He might be, like, if you're being all binary about it, but he's really not, I mean-"

"Okay, I've had about enough," Candace Two exclaimed. "I don't care who you all are going to bed with, and quite frankly, neither should any of you, not right now. What I do care about is busting Doofenshmirtz - and getting out of here. I don't understand why none of you have the ability to realize what's important here, so I'll do it for you: not another word about this. From this point on, getting home is the topic of this conversation, you hear?"

"Wait, did you just say Darthenshmirtz?" Six asked curiously. "What about him now?"

"Are you all insane?" Seven exclaimed. "Or is the only one who can see the madness here the one who doesn't exist? I should've expected this from people would commit-"

"Hey!" Candace Four snapped, having had about enough. "You may not exist, but you can still shut up when something isn't your business. If I wanted your opinion on my life choices, I would have rung you up on the cross-dimensional telephone and asked you." She glanced back at Candace, obviously expecting some sort of backup.

"Wh – ye – yeah..." Candace stammered weakly, her voice hardly audible over the pounding of her heart and thrumming of her blood in her ears.

"Nobody - nobody cares?" Candace Five spluttered. "Well - she cares!" Five pointed at little Candace One, still staring blankly into space. She flinched at Five calling her out, her eyes as wide as two dinner plates and face white enough to match. "Little me from the past cares - am I right? At least there's one of us who won't fall into whatever - whatever creepy mess happened to you three. Was this your idea? Or Phineas'? I guess it doesn't really matter anymore, does it?"

"I mean," Candace Six pointed out. "Phineas never-"

"I said enough!" Candace Two yelled. "I don't care about this. Neither should you! Not! Another! Word! Don't push me! We have things to do."

"Pah," Candace Seven retorted. "Everyone's favorite quantum-meddling busybodies will be by to pick us up in a bit, I'm sure. And probably to ruin my life even more, because, why not? What else do I have to lose? Guess I'm gonna find out."

It wasn't true, though. That much Candace knew. She swallowed hard when no one else spoke up to point out the obvious error in Seven's words. Was she really the only one out of all seven of them who could see this? "That's – that's not true," she finally managed. "Phineas and Ferb. They – they won't be coming for us."

"And why wouldn't they?" Candace Six asked, as Seven flickered disturbingly in and out behind her, glaring daggers all the while. Candace shivered and redirected her eyes to Six's face, which was doubting and suspicious, but at least not openly hostile. "Phineas would travel even to Mustafar to find me if necessary, I know."

"Phineas this, Phineas that," Candace Seven spat. "Our wonderful brothers. Eeeeeverybody loves them. Just like always." Her voice trailed off, but she continued muttering under her breath.

Candace Five shot Seven another weird glance, but shook her shoulders and rolled her eyes. "And why wouldn't they, then?"

"Because when we're here," Candace Four spoke up. "We don't exist - right?"

Candace nodded, sucking in a deep breath. If she really was the only one here who could understand these things, then she'd have to be the one to talk about them. Talk about them in the face of the other Candaces staring at her with their... don't think about, don't think about it, don't think about it. "It's – it's complicated. Basically, the short version is that we've kinda, uh, fallen. Outside of reality itself. Therefore - we're unreal. We don't exist. And past and present and future changed to reflect that - and it'll stay that way until we get back."

Talking a subject she understood so well was calming, in a way. She could drown her worries in the complexities of spaciotemporal interactions and hide there, away from the terrifying things the others were no doubt thinking about her.

"And how do we do that?" Five retorted. "Since your precious brother isn't here to rescue you?"

Candace Six was looking increasingly confused. "Wait – is the Phineas (and Ferb) you know significantly different from the one I do? I can't say I-"

"How many times do I have to say that you all need to shut up?!" Candace Two demanded, swinging her staff around and around in the air, before stabbing the end into a random piece of metal nearby, leaving a significant dent. Little Candace jerked violently, almost falling over again. The implied warning was clear.

Candace Five shot Candace a death glare, along with Four and Six, bringing that terror bubbling back up inside her. Candace Seven groaned loudly and briefly disappeared again, before popping back. Candace glanced over where little Candace One was sitting. Maybe – maybe she could go over there and see the smallest version of herself was okay - she did look kinda… shell-shocked. The two of them could get along, right?

Oh, who she was kidding. That was never going to go over well. And Candace Two was right. They needed out of here as well. Maybe if she just focused hard on that. And didn't let anything else distract her. She could manage that, right?

"Well," she started, "I was thinking I-"

"No," Candace Two cut her off. "No, no, no, no. I've had enough of your useless, time wasting ideas for one day. Anyone else?"

"H – hey!" Well, that was rude? Here she was trying to help, and now Two was just going to ignore her because she'd made on tiny mistake? That was – that wasn't very fair. "You act like that was my fault or something!" She turned to Candace Four, hoping some of the woman's amazing composure would be helpful here as well. "You know that wasn't my fault, right?"

"So you're just ignoring us now?" Candace Five interjected. "You simply forget all about the fact that these three are committing incest? Oh, okay, just making sure."

Candace Seven rolled her eyes. "It's typical. You get used to it. Nobody really cares about you - you've got look out for yourself, because you can bet your life that no one else will. 's what I had to learn the hard way."

"I mean…" Candace Four said slowly, turning to Candace and smiling apologetically. "I guess?"

"I was told that someone here would know the way home?" Candace Six echoed. "Can't we just go back whatever way we came?"

"No, no we can't," Candace cut in, trying her best to keep her voice steady. Just focus on the science. I can do that. I can do this. "If we – if we wanted to tear open the space-time continuum directly, we'd need a boatload of Pizzazium Infinionite. So that option's... it's right out."

"Right - as we all learned just a little while ago," Candace Two said, the sarcasm dripping from her tone. "And you want to risk our lives again? I don't think so."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me with that?" Candace protested feebly. "It was only one mistake – a – a miscalculation, you know? And it was – it was only because there's no Pizzazium around here, or I'd have already gotten us out here!" She hesitated. "Probably."

"Okay, then." Candace Two shrugged. "When you find your precious pizza-stuff, you let me know. Until then, we're taking ideas from anyone but you."

"Well, I - I - I -" Candace spluttered. This was starting to rub her temper a little bit in the wrong way, if she was being honest. She really was trying her hardest here, it was... she was doing her best! Couldn't Two see that? "I can't just 'find' Pizzazium! There's simply none in the - this non-dimension!"

"Couldn't we push these piles of junk to create some sort of beacon when explorers come?" Candace Six echoed.

"No," Candace Four replied quickly, shooting another apologetic glance in Candace's general direction. "If anyone does come for us, it won't be like that." Once more Candace was struck at the sheer coolness which which the woman spoke. It was like she was unaffected by any of this. Aw, geez... was she that weak?

"Quit ignoring me, please!" She pleaded. They – they didn't believe her, did they? What was she supposed to do about that? "There's none here and I'll – I'll prove it." Oh, great, way to run your big mouth, Candace. How am I supposed to do that, do you think? She quickly scanned the surrounding piles of junk. Well, maybe, if she was lucky... "If you all just – would just hold for even a few minutes and just – and give me a chance to do something, it might be useful to getting out of here."

"So I guess we just die out here then? Might as well ask me why I'm still here and spare me the misery of starving to death."

"No one's starving," Candace Two replied coolly. "We'll all be fine for at least another fortnight before that becomes even slightly relevant. I have a job to do - and I'm not giving up on it. If you wanna stick with me, then neither are you."

Either they were deliberately giving her a chance, or they were just ignoring her, because she was just that unimportant to the debate going. Stifling her worries over which it was, Candace knelt down and began studying the discarded gadgets piled in the Fail Zone more thoroughly. It was a good thing that she'd gone back and retrieved what was left of her scanty tool set after the tiger's attack. Constructing a basic radiation detector wouldn't be that hard. It wouldn't be the most accurate sort of gadget, but she hardly cared - or needed it anyway.

The other Candaces hardly cast a second glance at her as they continued rambling back and forth to each other about random ideas, some actually half-decent, and some so idiotic that Candace wondered what had gotten into the Candace that suggested them.

"Are any of you Force-sensitive?" Six asked. Candace had already briefly entertained the idea of trying to leverage the Mysterious Force into helping them get home - but it would never work, since the key ingredient in prodding the Force to act - Linda Flynn-Fletcher - was safely at home in reality.

"We could try, like, going around the long way?" Candace Four remarked. Which might have worked - had they been stranded inside reality, instead of outside of it. That was what was making this whole thing so difficult, really.

"I just can't believe I'm stuck here with you all," Seven groused. "Do you really think we can get out by ourselves? Of course not - we're just pawns in those boy's game with the universe itself. They don't care what happens so long as they get to do what they want - they get to have fun." Which just made no sense at all that Candace could interpret.

"Why did this have to happen again?" Five asked no one in particular - and she got no answer. Candace didn't even know what she was talking about.

Candace One was still sitting over a couple of yards off, and although she watched Candace as she worked with a strange, thoroughly shell-shocked expression on her face, she made no effort to draw closer - which was fair enough. At that age, Candace would probably have reacted in a similar manner to the knowledge that she was someday going to break up with Jeremy Johnson and get together with her brother instead.

"Can you let me have that?" she softly asked the girl, motioning to the quark stabilizer that One'd been sitting on. "I'd appreciate it." The girl only half-nodded silently, standing up and backing away, not taking her eyes off Candace for a second, as if she was expecting her to suddenly attack her like some crazed bloodthirsty vampire.

After a few hours of steady working while the other Candaces alternated between debating their situation and standing around in scattered groups shooting distrustful looks at each other; while Two just vanished - to scout the area or something? - and then reappeared, having climbed up to the top of a nearby junk pile (presumably to get a birds-eye view of the junkyard around them, which was honestly a better idea than many she'd heard the other Candaces bring up) Candace – Candace Three herself had finished the crude radiation detector and stood back up from the ground.

"Alright, I've finished," she said aloud, feeling proud of herself for reasons she couldn't quite describe - there was nothing particularly special about the device she had put together, after all. Maybe it was because even in spite of everyone ignoring her and Candace Five triggering what had to be her third worst nightmare by revealing her secret, she could still build. And as long as she could still invent things - no matter if those things weren't going to be of immediate help to anyone - she knew there was still hope.

Candace Two had somehow seen the motion, and also somehow managed to slide down the huge pile of junk in, like, two seconds flat, enough to be in her face before Candace could get a second word out. "What is it this time?"

Candace took a deep breath, if only because the amount by which the woman towered above her seemed to increase every time she turned her back. "It's a… simple radiation detector. Not very sensitive at all - in fact, quite insensitive, when it comes down to it. Only a tiny handful of materials can offload enough energy radiation to trigger this thing."

"And those are…?" Candace Four asked.

Candace smiled slightly despite herself. "Mudanium Finite could probably do it. Cutonium for pretty nearly certain would, and, most importantly, Pizzazium Infinionite definitely will." She couldn't be a hundred percent certain on the other materials without her calibration equipment to test it with, but Pizzazium's energy signature was so distinctive it was easy to eyeball - if you knew what you were doing, of course. Which she did. (Apparently unlike everyone else here? Somehow? Which was... not something she understood?)

"And that helps us how?" Candace Seven asked sarcastically.

"Please, I'm trying to explain," Candace replied, her voice dropping a touch or two in volume. "Since all it does is detect energy signatures, I can turn it on and prove that there's no Pizzazium in at least a five-hundred mile radius. Meaning-"

"-meaning that we won't be able to get back?" Candace Four echoed.

"Oh, that's great!" Candace Five threw her hands up in the air. "Just how I wanted to live out the rest of my days - with you all." Her eyes suddenly narrowed, and Candace swiftly looked elsewhere.

"If this explodes…" Candace Two said slowly, idly passing her staff between her hands. "We're going to have a problem."

Candace tried to think of a snappy comeback, but nothing came. Her hands were still shaking slightly – she was in no shape to be sarcastic or witty. Four, now. Four could probably do it, couldn't she? "Well, you - you… you'll just have to see." She reached down and turned the dial on the device, flipping the small switch to boot the creation.

"How are you even doing this?" Candace Five asked, her voice hinted by something that was, for the first time, not smugness or thinly-veiled disgust. It almost sounded like a faintest tinge of curiosity. "You're one of us - admittedly, a freaky version of us - but that doesn't change the fact that-"

She was interrupted by a loud beeping come from the scanner, that startled Candace as much as everyone else, almost into dropping the thing.

"What's that?" Candace Two demanded. "I'm warning you...!"

Candace glanced down at the small digital readout and could hardly believe her own eyes as she did so.  
"Theres's -" she stammered. "There's Pizzazium Infinionite nearby!" She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. "Like… directly nearby? But – but – I don't-"

"You found some?" Candace Four asked incredulously, peering over her shoulder. "That's - that's great."

"It's more than great!" Candace exclaimed. "It's amazing!"

"Yeah, sure, so you found the pizza and now everything's solved?" Candace Seven quipped. "I'll believe it when I see it."

"I don't even know what we're looking for?" Candace Six scratched her head. "What is this 'pizza' you keep talking about?"

"Something, like, super energetic," Candace Four explained hastily. "Like a… battery, only a million times better?"

"A million?" Candace scoffed, waving the device around, trying to get a better reading, if at all possible. "Try along the lines of a septendecillion or two. Then you'd be getting at least close."

"And how exactly is this going to help us?" Candace Two echoed. "Since the last time your plans only resulted in us very nearly getting blown into bits."

"Because last time I didn't have Pizzazium!" Candace returned, for once hardly registering the scary undertone to Two's voice. The reading on the tracker seemed to be emanating from… Candace Six? Strange - she didn't seem to be glowing. Or dead from exposure to radiation. There must not be very much, but there was definitely some, for absolute sure.

"Six!" she exclaimed. "You got anything under those pajamas? Anything… techy, in some way?"

"What?" Candace Six responded. She reached back and pulled out an odd-looking almost gun sort of thing. "Like… this?" Candace Two lowered her sunglasses and glared, obviously not pleased with this sudden development. Five and Seven seemed entirely unsurprised by it, although Candace Four took a tiny step backwards. (It was the first time she'd ever seen the other woman betray even the slightest hint of fear, honestly.)

"Yes, yes, yes! That's gotta be it!" Candace could hardly believe her - their - good luck. "Here, give it to me!" She reached out, but Candace Six drew it back before she could touch it.

"What are you doing? This is my blaster."

"Yeah, well, it's got Pizzazium Infinionite somewhere in it and I'm gonna tear it apart until I find it."

Candace Six looked shocked. "You will do no such thing!"

"Yeah," Seven agreed. "No such thing." She sent a significant glance in Candace Five's direction.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Candace exclaimed, the shaking her voice now mostly due to excitement rather than the lingering effects of her rattled nerves. "Don't you - don't you want to get out of here? Get home? How else do you expect to do it?"

"Yes, we want to get out of here," Candace Two replied coolly. "Although in light of… recent events, it seems unwise to put our trust in your hands." She paused. "Six wasn't here to witness the explosion, but I can see that she's at least got a good brain in her head on that regard, at least."

Now Candace was getting just the tiniest bit angry, but mostly just exasperated. "What the - what is wrong with you? Do you have a better plan?"

"That's the same question I might ask you," Candace Five replied, crossing her arms. "If you can't think straight enough to realize how bad an idea marrying your brother is - I'm inclined to side with bossy-" a sharp look from Candace Two made her hesitate briefly. "-Candace Two over here. An utter waste of time."

Now this was just too much. She had the way out, right here. Why wouldn't these other Candaces just listen to her? Okay, admittedly, she'd messed up, in kinda a big way. But seriously… come on! Candace turned back to Candace Four - her one true ally in this situation - trying to find someone to take her side.

"I said no, and I'm in charge," Candace Two broke into the conversation. "This ends here. Drop it."

But Candace couldn't drop it. "No!" she yelled back, her voice perhaps getting a bit louder than she'd intended. "You - you - ugh! It's not like-"

"Umm… hello?"

It was her voice, of course, because the entire argument and all conversation before it had taken place in her voice. But though this voice was the same, its tone was entirely different - and wholly more timid. It reminded Candace of how her own voice had sounded when she first…

Every head in the group turned to the left, and all eyes fell upon - Candace. Another one, to be precise, one who looked very out place in the gray, dusty streets of nonexistence in her fancy suit and tie and long pants.

"Oh, great," Candace Two muttered. Raising her voice, she cleared her throat. "Candace - you're officially dubbed Candace Eight. Meet One, Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven. I'm Two - and I'm the boss."

"So she claims," Six remarked in an off-handed way, earning herself a glare from Two. Candace got the uneasy feeling that something might go down between those two before too long. Six did have the gun, too, but she was standing entirely too close for it to be mathematically helpful. Not only that, but it was possible that the pizzazium in her gun was coming from the ammunition (though it would certainly be a strange place to find it), so she couldn't let the woman fire it, just... couldn't. It could potentially strand them here, for all time. Did no one else understand what she was trying to do? If only Six would just focus on what was clearly more important here... (maybe Two had a point in that regard).

"Ah ha!" Candace Five was smiling widely. "And who are you married to? Jeremy, right? I bet she is - she totally is."

The new Candace looked back and forth, seeming utterly confused. "I - I'm sorry?" she finally said. "Who's Candace?"

Now here was another unexpected event for this long, long unexpected day.

"That's you," Candace Four spoke up. "I mean… you and all of us. We're all from different dimensions."

"Are you, like, an amnesiac Candace or something?" Candace asked aloud. That was – would be bad of her to hope so? Because then this Candace wouldn't remember things, and then she might not just up and get so...

"Bet she's got two little brats who sent her here," Candace Seven mumbled, earning her a sideways glance from Candace Five. That kept happening - for some reason Candace suspected something wasn't right between them.

"I'm - no?" Candace Eight explained. "I'm not 'Candace' - I've never heard that name before in my life."

"Then who are you?" Candace Two demanded, tapping her staff impatiently on the ground.

"My name? My-" the new Candace cleared her throat, straightening her posture dramatically and sticking her hand out, smiling warmly. "My name is Kevin - Kevin Clarke. Mayor of Danville, at your service. It's a pleasure to meet you."


	5. Unstoppable Forces and Immovable Objects

For a moment, all was silent. Kevin stared at the group of people standing in front of her. In another situation, she might be confused, or frightened, but neither of those emotions were particularly strong just then. No emotion in specific was, actually - despite her best efforts to the contrary, her entire brain had locked up on her, refusing to process what she was seeing. They were all… well, they all rather resembled herself - rather resembled, even to a spooky degree. Except, for some strange reason, they'd assumed her name was 'Candace'.

Kevin'd never heard the name before, but she knew it was traditionally a male's name anyway - and thus one of the last things she'd have expected these other people to call her.. She wasn't sure whether or not she should take offense at what may well have been intended as an insult of some kind, but decided against it. You didn't succeed in the political arena having thin skin, after all. And compared to assorted other pressing matters, it wasn't that important.

Such as, for example, why she'd been preparing for a press conference in her private office, and suddenly heard that strange tearing sound - and fallen through a hole in what was very much supposed to be a solid wooden surface. The arrival here, in this strange gray city that somewhat resembled her city, was something she'd hardly even started to try and comprehend yet, much less make any sense out of.

Was she dreaming? No, as pinching herself had quickly confirmed. Then what the heck was going on? Had she passed out? She knew her family sometimes thought she pushed herself too hard, but she hadn't thought she'd been under that much stress. It wasn't even an unscheduled press conference, for goodness' sake.

And as she'd been wandering the streets of the strange, silent city, she'd heard voices. And of course, had made tracks straight for them - hoping to find someone - anyone - who knew what in the world was going on would be better than being alone, after all - and it was confirmation that she was indeed still lucid and functioning, despite the absolutely unreal circumstances surrounding… everything, really.

Instead, she'd found… them. And the theory that finding other people would provide reassurance that she actually was still sane promptly went out the window. Maybe she'd been under more stress than she'd assumed after all.

There were so many of them - seven, she counted - six adults, and one child. All of whom, child notwithstanding, bore an uncanny resemblance to herself - to the person that she saw every morning in the mirror. Except they weren't perfect mirrored clones of her, either, but strangely varied versions that were all their own levels of distinctness, while still being perfectly recognizable as herself nonetheless.

Some had freckles, and some did not. One was dressed in some sort of brown robe of some kind, and one kept flickering in and out of visiblity like she was an image on a television struggling for signal. Some looked about Kevin's own height, while some seemed a bit taller, and some stretched considerably above her six feet - ending with the one dressed in black, who reached head-and-shoulders above the rest of the group, easily commanding all attention to herself.

Kevin had seen some intimidating-looking people over the course of her career, but this was on another level. The woman's black clothing hugged her browned - browned to the extent of burnt, even - skin tightly, leaving almost nothing to the imagination, though her equally dark sunglasses completely blocked out whatever expression may have been in her eyes.

Even without their help, though, the body language the woman was telegraphing was as open as a book, and the way her hand clenched around the long pole she was holding was painfully obvious sign of a person whose temper was short indeed - and despite the dirty bedraggled quality of her hair, and the telltale reddish scars left by untreated acne that had apparently ravaged the woman's face in her younger years, it was impossible to miss the way her frame shifted - the way the muscles contracted beneath her skin - and Kevin knew beyond all doubt that here was someone who had the force to back up whatever temper should be lurking within her.

For a moment, that silence continued. Then, all it once, it was shattered by an overwhelming torrent of questions.

"Kevin?"

"That's a dumb name!"

"Clarke?"

"Wait, you're a mayor?"

"Is that, like, Billy Clarke? From third grade?"

"Do you have any idea how to get home?"

"Why's your name Kevin again?"

"What's your opinion on your brothers?"

"Not a creepy one, I hope?"

"What planet are you from?"

Kevin blinked, temporarily unable to handle the sudden inundation of questions. But, at the same time, there was a strange sort of comfort to found within them. She didn't know how to handle where she was - she didn't know how she'd gotten here, or where she was going, or who anyone here was. Frankly, as contrary to her long-ingrained habit as it was to admit it, she knew nothing.

But there was one thing she did know - and that was how to wrangle unruly members of the press who they could trip her up under similar amounts of pressure. That sort of thing? She was used to that by now - and from that specific angle, this was hardly worse than some press conferences she'd dealt with in the past. You just had to establish that you were the speaker, really. And the rest of the steps would fall into place from there. She wasn't an explorer or a … person who dealt with strange holes to nowhere manifesting in the floor.

What she was, though, was a public speaker. And that she could do.

She held up her hand, and waited for a second. As she'd hoped, the other women fell silent, even as the woman in black continued to give her a suspicious look - or at least, Kevin presumed that that was what she was doing, given that she couldn't actually tell due to the sunglasses.

"Yes, my name is Kevin. Kevin Clarke. As I know you can imagine, my parents chose it, and it's grown on me - I've become quite fond of it. I am the mayor of Danville, yes, for several years running now. It's a position that I undertook with the greatest of pride and appreciation for the voters who chose me - and confidence, of course, they they made the right choice." She paused for a moment, both for a breath and to gauge where exactly the brief brush at humor might land. Knowing your crowd was the _sine qua non_ of public speaking, really.

No one seemed amused. Fair enough - this was somewhat a serious gathering, apparently. "I would be greatly honored to make the acquaintance of 'Billy', yes - and my husband is, of course, Wilma Clarke, whom I met in third grade. We hit it off almost immediately, and , overcoming all obstacles, married as soon as I finished law school at the age of twenty-four. I'm certainly going to find out where this is place is - of course, we'll Nothing is without explanation, after all, and I stand confident before you that this, too, is no obstacle too great to be overcome,. Petra and Fern are quite well, and thank you for your concern. I'm quite proud of their public contributions, as well as thankful for their influence in my adolescent years that helped prepare me for office." She hesitated for the first time in her impromptu speech, but the look of utter seriousness on the face of the asker - as well as the reality that was still settling into her brain - prompted her to answer despite the seeming farcity of its nature. "...and I'm from Earth?"

She lowered her hand. "I'll take more questions at this time - remember, one at a time, please."

Though considering how little she actually knew about the situation, maybe it was time for her to ask the questions instead. It was certainly always easier if you were the one on the offensive. But before she had a chance at that, one of them stepped forwards - the one with the dark sunglasses and the long pole - and the closer she got the smaller Kevin couldn't help feeling next to her.

Force of long habit had her almost expecting one of the DVPD to step in about now and prevent the woman from getting any closer. But she was disappointed - obviously, not being in Danville anymore, apparently. Which just continued to raise the question of where she was, if not in her city.

"So… Kevin?" the woman remarked. Something worth nothing was probably that other women had almost… cleared a path for this one step through. It was likely, then, that she was in charge, or at least in some position of authority. This was useful information.

"Yes," Kevin replied, stepping forwards and extending her hand. "It's nice to meet you." She smiled her usual smile - warm, friendly, outgoing, confident. All the things she wasn't feeling, really, but it didn't matter she felt that way so much that it mattered that she appeared to feel that way. Appearance was key.

The woman pushed her outstretched palm away with the end of her pole, not sparing her a second glance. "I don't care. As long you remember that I'm Candace Two, that I'm in charge, and that you must obey my orders, I couldn't care less about the rest of that drivel. All you need to know is that we're implementing the plan to get out of here, which is walking until we find something. Because we've…" the woman -'Candace Two', apparently, because why not? - looked behind her for a second.

It was so strange to try to apply that name to the woman in front of her. It would've been like meeting a man named 'Frank' or some such. But Kevin could accept it - she'd accepted stranger. This was part of her job, after all. Diplomacy, and all that. It was best to not rock the boat before she'd found her footing, and would no doubt earn her points with the rest of these people and their strange names. People liked to be accepted, after all. It was how you earned votes - there was no election campaign that didn't take that into account.

"Four?" Candace Two asked.

"Right!" the one who was apparently Four answered. "Uh, we've fallen outside of reality and will no longer exist until we're able to get back inside. Which can't be done without Pizzazium Infinionite, apparently, which-"

"-which I found right here-" another of the women jumped in, but she was quickly cut off by Candace Two.

"Can it, Three." Two turned back to Kevin. "That's the situation.. Got it? Good."

Kevin noted that one called Three was obviously unhappy with being told to 'can it'. But given that Two was in charge - and had the means of enforcing her authority, obviously - she thought it wise to go along with the flow for now (and if Two's ideas should prove to be too unreasonable, the division that she was already noticing would work to her advantage in bringing about a change of leadership.) "Certainly."

Candace Two snorted, muttering disdainfully under her breath. "You keep that cool head and you're automatically better than the rest of this sorry lot. Follow my orders to the letter, and we're not going to have a problem."

It was just then the little girl approached her, a confused look on her face. "You said your name is Kevin," she said hesitantly.

Kevin nodded. "That's right. What can I do for you?"

The girl tilted her head as if in thought, and when she spoke again, her voice shook with the unmistakable tremor of one who wishes not to show how nervous they are. "Kevin… as in the one that the zebra mentions? You know, when he shows up and says 'I voted for you, Kevin?'"

She was just about to reply with the group opened up on her again. These women really did have no idea how to conduct an interview, did they? It was like trying to rake leaves on a windy day up in here, seriously.

"The zebra?!"

"Oh, gosh, it's you!?"

"I… what?!"

"Wait… what's a 'zebra'? Is it like the 'pizza'?"

"You know the talking zebra?!"

"What is it?!"

Kevin blinked, not fully grasping just what the commotion was all about, but she knew well enough that you could never look like you were losing control of these things. There was nothing more unruly than a press pool that thought it had the upper hand. It was a situation that she'd experienced a few times at the beginning of her career, and not one which she wished to re-live right now, of all times. Still it was evident that she needed to be more emphatic about that taking of control.

So she held up her hand again. "People, people, one at a time! I'll answer all the questions fitting into our time segment, if you can remain orderly and give them in turn, understand?."

There was a split second of silence among the group, and she jumped in and grabbed ahold of it with both hands. "Now when you're ready to proceed one at a time, in an orderly fashion, I'm certainly prepared to take all the questions you may have at some time." She paused, momentarily becoming unsure of this whole situation. What was she even doing? Where was she? Who were these people, anyway? They certainly weren't reporters.

No - this wasn't the time for that. Fear and self-doubt was perfectly normal, but you couldn't afford to let it show in public. Not in a publicized campaign debate, not in a press conference, and not now. So she wouldn't.

"You first," she said, pointing to the little girl. "You can have the first question." Honestly, she needed the break, and children were the easiest to talk circles around Given the looks on the other women's faces, it wouldn't be a long reprieve, but she didn't need a long one, either.

The girl seemed confused for a second, and stole a glance back at the women standing behind her. Kevin could tell from the sheer atmosphere that the order she'd managed to instill was uneasy and liable to shatter any second - she really needed this girl to speak up and fill the air with something so the other women - the women who were all named Candace, apparently - would have something to listen to while they waited their turn.

"I mean," the girl - wait, she was Candace too, wasn't she? Weird. - finally said. "The zebra. The one who shows up and rambles about voting for Kevin. Is he talking about you?"

Kevin took a token moment to think about her answer - enough to let her audience know that she was thinking over an obviously important query, without seeming hesitant. It was all part of the game.

"I would give it a high chance of possibility?" she answered. "Yes there's a certainly a possibility there - though I'm speaking from my own perspective of course, but I've seen the numbers even so - they're certainly considerable indeed." She smiled proudly. "Did you know that I beat my running opponent by over seventy percent in almost every poll of Danville's equid population?"

Now there was something to be proud of. And you know what? She could believe that the anonymous 'zebra' this girl was talking about was talking about her. Because he could be. The equids could be notoriously opposed to appropriating city funds for infrastructure that wouldn't have an immediate benefit. But who had managed to convince the town council that the new park on South Street was worth the investment? She had. And who had said that move was going to be the death of her fledgling career?

...Stanley Hirano, of course. But Kevin had never valued her opinion, anyway.

And when the polls came rolling in, who had reaped the rewards of all that hard work? She had. Yes, it was definitely something to proud of, she thought.

"Wait - they're 'considerably indeed'?" another of the women suddenly blurted out, her face a pale, taut picture of horror. "What do you mean by that? Are there more of them?"

It was all Kevin could do keep a straight face and not immediately burst out in laughter. "Are there more - of course, statistically speaking, equids make up a good twenty percent of Danville - thus they're our third biggest population subset." Honestly, though. She wasn't a preschool teacher.

Some of the Candaces - was that the plural of Candace? Kevin wasn't sure - seemed varying degrees of shocked. The one in the robe was staring intently but looked more curious than anything, and the tall one in black had disappeared entirely. Kevin wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

"So you are the one he's been talking about all this time?" one exceptionally unhappy-looking spoke up.

"Oh my - I can't believe this," the one called 'Three' muttered. "Phineas and Ferb and I tried to so hard to figure out what was going on, but we never could! We never could."

"No one would ever believe me!" the little girl almost shouted violently, kicking at the ground. "I told them I wasn't crazy! But would they believe me? Nooo!"

"Get used to it, kid," remarked the flickery Candace, rolling her eyes. "You're gonna have a hard life ahead of you if you depend on them for anything. Beyond pain and suffering."

"Why are you even here?" another one asked. "I thought this whole weird thing was only getting other us-es? Not… you."

"Can you make him go away?!" the one called Four exclaimed. "He's been a constant pain for my entire life - 'I voted for you, Kevin!' - no, no you didn't! And I don't need that in my life!"

Kevin glanced back, looking for the one who'd called herself Two - the one who was in charge. She did seem to have had the ability to inspire the others to silence - an ability that would've come in very handy right then., There was no Two to be found, though - apparently it was to up to Kevin alone to answer these lookalikes as best she could - though she had to admit, she was still confused as to what they were asking exactly.

"Have you been putting him up to this?" another of the Candaces demanded, taking a step forward. "I'll bet you have."

"You know, I actually haven't seen him since I ceased to exist," the flickery Candace said. "I wonder if he actually can't find me anymore." She snorted. "Good riddance if so."

"You've got to make him stop!" Three cried. "I don't need him in my life, making it even weirder than it already is. I just can't take it all sometimes!"

"Like you've got any place to talk!" another woman snapped. "My life is just about normal, thank you very much, and yet I still have to deal with this stupid zebra!"

"Alright, alright," Kevin broke in, trying to calm them all down. "I have some great friends down at the precinct who I'm sure can find who you're looking for - and take whatever action they may deem is necessary in the process." She smiled reassuringly. "If your beliefs are"

"If my beliefs are?" one of them broke in. "If my beliefs are?! Because dealing with this horrid hallucination for twenty years isn't bad enough - I get to meet another weirdo from the weird creepy talking zebra dimension and she has the audacity to tell me if my beliefs are?"

"Yeah!" Three piped up behind her. "That animal has caused me enough suffering in the past half of my life!"

"Now, look," Kevin tried to explain, raising her hands slightly. This situation was spiraling out of control, and seeing as she'd still failed to grasp what they were getting so worked up about in the first place, she didn't know quite how to rescue it, either. "I'm quite sure-"

"I don't care what you're quite sure of!" someone shouted. "I just want you to make him go away - and never come back!"

Now, Kevin couldn't exactly do that, could she? What did these women think she was - a mind controller? Some sort of autocratic despot? Not hardly. "Please-"

"You know him," the little girl said, scowling. "And you know what he's done to me. So make him stop."

"Let's take a moment," Kevin reasoned, "And consider the-"

"HEY!"

It was the one in the bathrobe - the one who'd been mostly quiet up until now - yelling with such force that it threw the rest of the group, including Kevin herself, into shocked silence. (Her speaking coach would be ashamed.)

"I wasn't going to take it!" Three complained. "But I just wanted to see if I could see where the the pizzazium infinionite was!"

That prodded Two into action. "Three!" she snapped. "We talked about this - and I said no! Don't you dare try anything!" Wait a second, Two? The one who'd - where had she even - how in the - did the woman move like a literal ninja or something? One moment? Gone. The next? Like she'd never left. It was almost creepy, the effect.

But Three put her hands on her hips and scowled, not seeming much affected at all. "Don't you want to get home?! To bust that 'Doofenshmirtz' that you love to talk about so much?" she looked around the group. "Don't you all want to get home? And not, I don't know, starve to death out here?"

"That is not your responsibility," Two returned coolly. "You cannot be trusted to not incinerate us all. You have proven yourself untrustworthy."

"That's - that's what you think, huh?" returned Three. She took a slight step back, away from Two and her long pole, but continued looking defiant. "Well - well, I - I - you can! And you're all gonna have to if you ever wanna get out of here."

The Candace in the bathrobes frowned. "And exactly should I trust you with my blaster?"

"Yeah," mocked the flickery Candace. "Why should she?"

"I - I -" stammered Three. "Well - because Four says so!"

"Wait, what?" Four exclaimed, looking shocked. "Oh, no - don't get me-"

But Three had grabbed ahold of Four and pulled her over in front of herself. "See? She knows that I know what I'm talking about! Don't you, Four?"

* * *

If she had been at home, Candace Four reflected, Phineas would have undoubtedly told her something about making this the best day ever. It was how he rolled, after all – no matter how dismal their prospects would occasionally look, he'd smile and cheer her up in his incontrovertible way, she would actually find herself believing him because she believed in him, and they would get through it together, somehow. And by the end, it would probably have been one of the best days on record.

But Phineas wasn't here right now. And this – this was rapidly beginning to turn into one of the worst days ever instead.

It wasn't just the whole trapped outside of her dimension part. Candace could deal with that, provided that it was temporary. Getting stuck with all these obnoxious versions of herself? Yes, that was as annoying as being confronted by Canderemy Candace – Candace Five, now – had been back when she'd been stuck in her other self's body for a while. (From an outside perspective, said body didn't look any worse for the wear now.) Her other selves had asked intrusive questions about her relationship which could revive some of her doubts, but for now her anger and her self-conviction were enough to stave that off. Because really, who did these people think they were? If there was anyone here to whom she was going to listen, it wasn't going to be Candace Five. Or Seven, the weird glitchy one who made all those random comments every now and then.

But there was something else going on. Because there was one other Candace who had made an impact on her, the only one with whom she had her relationship with Phineas in common (aside from the strange one with the gun). One Candace whom she'd met up with at the start and with whom she had shared the same side of an argument plenty of times since then. The Candace with whom she'd been stuck in a shed trying to fend off a ferocious tiger, and thus arguably the one she had bonded with the most.

And that was exactly what provided the problem.

Because that very Candace – Candace Three – was the living encapsulation of everything she had ever feared.

Candace knew Phineas loved her by now, but she had never quite understood why. Because she was flawed. She was messed up. She was… kind of boring. Her defining character traits were her nervousness, her temper tantrums, her insecurities… there was little that was positive there, unlike with her brothers, who could turn the world into whatever they desired it to be because they had a mechanical and scientific gift that surpassed anything she could ever try. But he still loved her, because she was Candace Flynn. Because she was focused, kind-hearted, determined, brave, and all those other things he had claimed she was – which he had reminded her of – time and time and time again. For better or for worse, Phineas was in love with Candace Gertrude Flynn. If there was anything she'd learned from her adventure in the dimension in which she was with Jeremy, it was that her brother would always love her for being who she was.

But here was someone else who was who she was – seven someones, in fact (provided that Kevin counted. She still wasn't sure on that account - name aside, the other woman certainly didn't sound very Candace-like, although it was probably hard to set a reliable standard for that anyway.) And one of those someones, Candace Three, was different. She was still everything that made her her – everything that made Phineas love her – but she claimed that she could do those amazing things that Four would never be able to do. She was Phineas' equal in every way, in a way that Candace Four could never dream to be.

Was she worried that Phineas would want Candace Three instead? Three was still a Candace, after all. Yes, she might be in a relationship in her own dimension, but that wouldn't stop Phineas – if he found out – from pining after her…

…no, that wasn't it. She knew it wasn't, and especially after the events of last year, the thought of Phineas leaving her for someone else – even someone who was technically her as well – was not something she got distressed over anymore. Candace was absolutely confident in the fact that Phineas would ever leave her, or outright desire another woman. He loved her, after all, and he loved the kids. He would always stick with her.

But – and this was what counted – if she told him the story of this adventure, or if he discovered that there was an inventing Candace out there through his own explorations, something else might change. The way he looked at her, for one. It would undoubtedly still be filled with love and affection, but there would be a slight… tinge there. A tinge of regret, regret that she wasn't like the other one. Because Phineas had always tried to involve her in his projects, and he'd tried to teach her that she could do everything he could, too. And she'd eventually been able to convince him otherwise, but she knew he regretted that fact.

So he would look at her after this adventure, the Candace that couldn't, in the full knowledge that somewhere out there was a Candace that could. And then…

…and then she would be found wanting.

This fear was exactly why she had been unable to deny a feeling of relief when her other self's machine had exploded. Because even if it had just scuttled their hopes she had to get home, it had given her another hope – an uncomfortably vindictive one, but hope nonetheless – that maybe this other Candace wasn't better than she was. That maybe the way of the world as she'd always known it, with Phineas and Ferb as the inventors and her as the dumb sidekick, was as universal as she'd always assumed it to be.

It was a very vindictive and also a stupid hope, because she'd seen the rift tracker, the fusion generator, and those other things Candace Three had built. And Four couldn't really believe that she would be able to build all those machines if they didn't actually work. But she clung to her hope nonetheless, because it was all she had right now. And because seeing Candace Three, the one who had told her that all this impossible stuff was easy and any Flynn really ought to be able to do it, just straight-up fail like that was kind of satisfying.

Above all, she felt confused. Arguments and counterarguments warred in her head, voiced by the mental images of herself which had been summoned back to life after what had been at least a good many months of absence. (It was probably because all these images of herself were already on her retina anyway.) She didn't know what to think, or what to say, and so she had stayed quiet as Candace Three had tried to reassert herself and her inventing authority against Candace Two's deeply rooted distrust.

But then Candace Three appealed to her directly. And before she could even tell her that she wanted absolutely no involvement in this, Three's arm had forcefully dragged her into the spotlight facing all these other Candaces.

"She knows that I know what I'm talking about! Don't you, Four?"

Four hesitated. She almost felt like she couldn't speak. She… she could have probably guessed that she'd have to make a decision, but she had preferred to think that she wouldn't. And now she stood here. And she was stuck.

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Candace Four had never been so relieved to hear the voice of that self-righteous twat Five before. "You're not going to listen to her, are you? She's just as much of an incestuous mess as Three is!"

"Wait, what?" Kevin spoke up. She could feel from the arm which Candace Three was still holding her with that her counterpart cringed. "Incestuous?"

Candace Five gave her her default smug look. "That's why I asked you about our brothers earlier. Three and Four – and Six, too – are in relationships with their brother. With Phineas."

"I think it would be Petra for her" Six pointed out. "Didn't she say-"

"Nobody asked you anything!"

"Yeah, the same thing goes for you" Three snapped at Five, an odd stammer in her voice. Strange, Candace hadn't noticed the fact that her other self stuttered before? (At least that was one thing that she'd never had to grapple with.) "But I did ask Candace Four something. Tell her, Four. Tell Six that if she'd just let me take a look at her blaster and use the pizzazium from it, I can take us home."

Candace Three let go of her arm, which allowed Four to think more clearly. She still didn't get very far, though, because Candace Two was – once again – stomping on the ground with her stick. "None of this is relevant because none of it is going to happen" she said coldly. "We're not going to trust the woman who tried to blow us up."

"Yeah!" Candace One exclaimed, getting everybody's attention as it was the first time she'd spoken up in a while. "Even if you – even if you hooked up with Phineas…," she could see the shock and discomfort on her younger self's face, "you should still be able to tell that we can't do any of that crazy stuff that he does!"

"I mean, that is true" Six reflected. "I know I could never do the amazing things Phineas can."

"Of course that's going to be the angle she'd take" Seven muttered. "But yeah, that is true. Couldn't do those things even if I wanted to. It's unnatural for us to build. Surely you can agree with us on that, can't you Four?"

Candace Four felt like she could shrink. "Well, yes" she admitted. "I mean, that sort of stuff is something I've wanted to do, sometimes… but I know I've never been able to…" Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of Candace Three, whose previous confidence was replace with sudden concern and – and perhaps seeing that expression on her own face hit the hardest – hurt.

"Candace, you know I am able to do this, right?" she said softly. "I mean, you may not like it, but you saw me. You – you saw the rift tracker I made, and the cold fusion reactor… it might have not worked in the end because I didn't have pizzazium, but… you know I knew what I was doing, didn't you?"

Candace hesitated, a blush creeping up her cheeks. "Well, I… I don't want to say you didn't, but…"

She stared at Candace Three, who was staring back at her. "C-Candace?"

She cast her eyes down. Not facing Three was… easier.

 _It's not like she doesn't deserve it_ , a voice in her brain argued. _Do you remember how she treated us earlier? We need to take her down a peg._

 _But you know what they said about her is not true, don't you? Another voice interrupted. You saw her at work on that cold fusion reactor, and the space-time ripper. That is way out of our league._

 _Candace Two doesn't seem to think so – she saw the machine and its explosion, and she is the most vocal opponent of giving Three another chance. The majority of us-es agree that we can't trust her with this – we can't go against them, right? Not for her. Not after she made us look like an idiot. And what if she does invent something dangerous this time?_

 _Yeah, right. That's really why we're not backing her, and not at all because we can't stand that she's better than us. Come on, when have a majority of mes ever had the right idea on anything?_

 _…that's not nice._

 _It's true and you know it._

Candace Two once more stomped on the ground with her stick. "All right, enough of this! We've already established that your ideas are dangerous, Three, and no one else is going to allow you to get involved in our efforts to get home again, so you might as well drop it."

"Hey!"

"Can it, Three," Two repeated, pointing the stick in her direction. "Now, as I was saying before, is there anyone who has something new to add? Kevin? Anything at all to add?"

As Kevin started rambling off a long-winded and vaguely incoherent answer which was probably politician for 'no, I haven't got a clue', Candace Four took the opportunity to take a step back from the debate around her. (Frankly, she wished that she could just leave it altogether, but that probably wasn't possible and wasn't going to get her any closer to home.) And out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Three doing the same thing, and then giving Four a look.

It wasn't an angry look, per se. She could have coped with that. Three wasn't angry at her. She was just disappointed and hurt, and it stung deep within Candace's heart.

 _She deserves it_ , her inner voice argued. _Didn't you see her earlier? She keeps trying to overshadow us. To be better than us. So what if she's hurt now? That's what she deserves._

 _But she trusted me. And now I let her down when she needed me most. Even at that one moment where I could have been useful, where I could have made a difference, I didn't dare to admit the truth._

 _The truth? What truth! Those fancy tools and gadgets she worked on can't work, won't work, because she's us, and we can't do that! How else would you explain why that space-time ripper blew up?_

 _The pizzazium…_

 _Pizzazium, schmozzazium! Our brothers can work miracles even when they have a few card boxes at their disposal, so do you really think she would need that kind of equipment? She's just being arrogant._

 _Maybe she can do a few tricks, but that doesn't mean that she is so much better like she thinks she is!_

 _Actually, Phineas has mentioned pizzazium every once in a while, and he did say he couldn't make some of his more complex projects without it. And you know, maybe she's not even trying to overshadow us, she's just saying those things because to her it's so natural that she can't imagine us not being able to invent. After all, we thought Phineas and Ferb were trying to make us look stupid back in the day and it turned out that they weren't doing any of that on purpose, remember? So why can't it be the same thing with Three?_

 _Ugh! Would you stop being so reasonable?_

 _But being reasonable is the reasonable thing to do!_

 _Not in this scenario it isn't!_

"Would you guys just STOP!"

For a moment, Candace Four thought that scream had come out of her own throat, as she would do just about anything in that moment to stop the voices yelling at her inside her head. But no – the scream had come out of Six's throat instead, and she was yelling it to the other Candaces around her, whose arguing Four had somehow not managed to pick up on. Six took a step forwards. "We're all in this together, and we're going to have to figure it out together, and if there is someone who can help us with that we should listen to her, rather than dismissing her out of hand! Four, you still haven't given your answer yet – do you agree that Three knows what she's talking about when she says she can use my blaster to get home?"

"Oh, please!" Five snapped before Four could get a word out (really, this would be annoying if she wasn't so grateful for the chance not to say anything.) "Like we're really going to listen to any of you incest lovers just hashing it out together! You're all the same! If you can't even see your relationships are unhealthy, why in the world should we listen to you on anything else?"

"Because you're the one whose precious marriage with your precious Jeremy is so messed up that you're still seeing a shrink for issues you should have resolved a long time ago!" Four snapped back. "If we shouldn't be taking advice from me because of the relationship that isn't any of your business, then we certainly shouldn't take advice from you!"

"You're really going to play that card?" Five said venomously. "Oh, that's rich. At least I've still got Jeremy. At least I didn't lose him and then had to resort to living with my brother." From the corner of her eye, Four could see Three cringe at those words, and an odd sense of protectiveness welled up inside her. "And that is why I'll always know I am more functional than you are – because if I wasn't, Jeremy would have left me a long time ago. There are plenty of other fish in the sea, and he chose me."

"Yeah, sure, that's the most healthy attitude to have" Four replied. "And it only derives from your pathetic clinginess to Jeremy as the most important person ever – something I don't think he would even want you to believe. You do realize that I could say the same thing about Phineas, couldn't I? That he hasn't left me because I'm the best? My relationship with Phineas – my brother, yes – is sane and functional, and he sticks around because he loves me and I love him! I don't have the illusions about Phineas that you do about Jeremy – I know he could have chosen someone else! But he chose me, and in Three's universe he chose Three, and in Six's he chose her! So you can take your high-minded attitude about your perfect marriage and shove it where the sun doesn't shine, because nobody cares about what you have to say!"

There was an odd sense of quiet after that, with Five and Seven clenching their fists but not yet responding, whereas One just continued to look shocked and Two – well, it was probably best that she didn't describe just how red Two's face was getting. But before she could do anything about that, Kevin cut in.

"That is… is that your problem?" she asked. "You're in love with Petra – er, with Phineas, and you know he is in love with you. You seem to be quite convinced of that fact, and yet you are defensive about it. That leads me to believe that there is something about your relationship that still bothers you, and the fact that you're denying rather than rejecting Three's skills - which is quite obvious from your reluctance to discuss the topic, too - has to do with it. You refuse to admit that she can do things that most of you can't, that I can't. You think she's better than you are, and that's a difference between you and Three, so you wonder whether the knowledge that there is a 'better' you out there – no offense – will disrupt your relationship with Phineas in any way. Right?"

Candace Four's eyes widened. "I…I…"

Everyone was looking at her now. Even Three was giving her a new look, something between surprise and incomprehension. "Four, is that… true?" she said, in a remarkably soft voice.

Seven snorted. "Oh, sure. Even two similar versions of me can't get along, and you want to know why? Because the one thing they're similar on has messed them up for good! It all comes down to our brothers, doesn't it Five?"

Candace Five looked at her, and then actually hesitated. "Well, yeah" she replied. "This is definitely about them, and if that is really what Four thinks…" She shook her head. "That's laughable. And you called me crazy. It's pretty clear to me now to which versions of me that epithet applies."

"I'm sure we all have… some irrational fears" Three pointed out. "Can't we all just get along?"

Wait, was Three standing up for her? Standing up for the one who had let her down just now – who still hadn't admitted to something she knew considered suspected to be true? Granted, Five had been dismissive of all three of them, but even so, Three hadn't spoken up against Five and Seven very often before. For her to do so now, right after Four had all but admitted to denying her the chance to help them out of sheer spite…

 _It doesn't change anything. She's still arrogant and acts like she knows better than anyone._

 _Are you even listening to what I am telling you?_

 _You haven't told me anything yet that makes -_

 _Lalalalalalalalala!_

 _Oh for the love of…_

 _How did she get out of that closet again? Seriously, how?_

 _I don't know! Stop staring at me, it's not my fault!_

 _Lalalalalalalalala!_

 _Can we use Six's blaster on her, please? Somehow?_

 _Even as Candace Four's hands went up to her temples to_ assuage the stress of listening to three Candaces rambling inside her head and probably at least as many outside it (with Candace Five having returned to her preferred subject about how crazy everyone else was, except for the one who kept zapping in and out of existence and the teenager because apparently they were fine) she knew she had to make a decision. Some decision. Now.

"All right, that's it!"

Candace Two's stick slammed on the ground with such force that all Candaces (and Kevin) took a step back. "We are not talking about Jeremy versus Phineas anymore, and we're not letting Three anywhere near Six's space gun! And now you are all going to come with me without any remaining word of complaint, because otherwise you can stay here and stew in your own misery for all I care!" She settled her hands on her hips again, taking a deep breath as she visibly calmed down. From behind her sunglasses, her eyes roamed over the group, looking utterly unimpressed. "In case you haven't noticed it before, I tried to help you by keeping you safe and getting you to focus on our return home, but that ends here. You're the most miserable, undisciplined group of soldiers I've ever seen, which leaves it to me to go out there now and find us a way to get home. If you don't want to come along with me, you can stay here for all I care. No skin off my nose. But if I should ever return here, I would think the ones out of you that won't have fallen prey to any of those tigers will be significantly more cooperative."

There was a moment of silence among their group. Candaces exchanged glances, but nobody dared to speak up. Candace One especially looked intimidated, and it wasn't just from Two yelling at them. Four felt sorry for her – she couldn't imagine what she would do if she was dragged out of her dimension at age fifteen and forced to confront the fact that she might eventually enter a relationship with her brother. (Actually, she could imagine what she would do, because she was doing it right now. This whole 'other versions of herself' thing was still hard to get used to.)

Then, Candace Six stepped forward.

"No."

Candace Two frowned. "No, what?"

"No, we're not going to come along with you and just walk through this wilderness in the hope that we'll find a way to get home" Six calmly replied. "Not until we've exhausted all the options. And by we, I mean all of us, because we're in this together and you're not running out on us until we all get home, together."

Two let out a sound that sounded vaguely like laughter. (Which was unusual, given that this was Two they were talking about.) "You really think I'll stay here while you're letting Three blow everything up? How do you think you're going to enforce that?"

Candace Six gave her a strangely manic grin before raising her blaster, bringing it to Two's throat before the bespectacled woman could even think about raising her stick. "Make an educated guess."

"That thing isn't even loaded," Five snorted.

"That's what I told you, yes," Six said. "But tell me, Candace Two – are you really going to bet on that being true?" She tightened her hold on the trigger, subtly but clear enough for those watching her intently – and that was everyone by now – to notice. And even though Candace Two's eyes weren't visible, Four wondered whether this might, at last, be something the woman would get nervous about.

But if she did, there was no sign of it. Instead, Two only let out that harsh sound that, again, did sort of sound like a chuckle. "If you insist," she replied. "I can run when I need to - and you, little girl, will never be able to catch me. It's not worth my energy to try saving people that intent on running headfirst into death. I told you what happened the last time, and yet you're still going to put yourself at risk by trusting Three with your lives? There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and if you're that intent on trampling all over it, then it's fine by me." Calmly, coolly, in manner that dared anyone to put up any resistance, she reached up and grabbed ahold of the gun's barrel, pushing it up and away until it was pressed vertically into Six's face. Two herself leaned farther and farther over until Six was nearly bent over backwards to see the woman's eyes. "But leave the toys out of it - if I was going to _hit_ you, there wouldn't be time enough for you react beforehand, and there wouldn't be _life_ enough for you to react after."

"Well, that's - that's fine by me," Six returned, her voice still surprisingly even as she backed down. Two hung onto the barrel for a moment more and then shoved it and Six away from her, sending the latter woman stumbling a step or two backwards.

"If you're going to kill yourselves in your stupidity, I won't try to stop you," Two said. "I've attempted to force you to see sense enough. I'm leaving. If you come after me, I expect complete obedience or I swear I will break your kneecaps and leave you for the tigers." Kevin perked up at the mention of tigers for some reason, but dared not say anything - nor did anyone, really. Two just had that effect on people.

"Well, that would be the difference between you and me, I guess," Six replied hesitantly, even as Two turned on her heel and began pacing away. "Yes, I understand that what Three did makes you concerned about putting your faith in her again. But even if you and Candace One were there and you've apparently obtained enough of a grudge against her to last a lifetime, that doesn't mean that Three doesn't have the right to get a second chance. And, as you'll remember, one of the people who was there still hasn't given us her opinion on Three's oh-so-destructive potential."

Everybody's eyes turned to Candace Four, who felt very nervous all of a sudden – especially considering the still-hurt expression and yet vague hopefulness in Three's eyes. Candace Six nodded and turned towards her. "Four, be honest," she said softly. "Do you believe we can trust her?"

 _You can't give in now! one of her inner selves screamed. Not to that smug, obnoxious…_

 _She's not any of those things and you know it, and she's our only help to get home!_

 _No she's not! Look, whatever got us here has to pop up again, right? And this place doesn't look like it should be that big – there could be other venues to escape! We haven't explored any of them yet!_

 _And what will you do once that doesn't lead to anything? Just go back to Three and grovel? Think of how humiliating it would be!_

 _Maybe… but we don't know that will happen, and in any case we can't give in now, we can't admit that she's better than we are, we can't…_

But that didn't matter. None of those arguments mattered anymore as Candace looked to her third self and saw the hope mixed with hurt in her eyes. She wouldn't – she couldn't do this to her.

"Well?" Candace Six asked again.

 _Don't give in!_

Candace Four looked up and gave her third counterpart a small smile and a nod before turning back to Six. "Yes" she replied. "Yes I do."


	6. Homeward Bound

It was the sound of nightmares. The sound of the very fabric of space and time, of reality itself, being torn apart at the seams, stretched to the very limit until it could stretch no farther and was rent in twain.

Yet, in spite of all the nightmarish images and memories that the sound conjured up from the depths of Candace Three's brain, she'd never worked quite so hard to hear it - just one more time. One more time was all she wanted, all she desired. Because to hear that sound again would be to get home, home, with Phineas and Amanda and Xavier, home where she could hopefully live out the rest of her life without having the universe tear itself apart around her anymore.

Honestly, she wasn't quite sure how much more of this place she could handle.

Being here twenty years ago with Phineas and Ferb had been… not quite so bad, in some ways. At least she and her brothers got along, more or less. But all these spatio-temporal duplicates of her… yeah, things weren't nearly so smooth among them. She did have Candace Four, at the very least, who, of all things, had mirrored her relationship choices in another dimension. (Aside from apparently Six, whom she hardly counted.) Of course, Four did just have to be, like, entirely better at defending her life choices to Five and Seven, because Candace Three could never catch a break. She'd been the butt of one too many cosmic jokes by now to expect anything else.

Of all the Candaces here, she was clearly one of the 'weird' ones, and of the 'weird' ones, she was the weirdest. Such had been her entire life up till now, after all. It was… great, really. Such fun.

Well, Candace Four apparently thought it was fun. Or something like that - had considered her 'better' in some way. Candace snorted to herself in disbelief. She still wasn't quite sure what to think about that whole thing, honestly - Candace Four was pretty clearly the more... well-adjusted? Of the two of them. What did it say about Four if she actually thought she wanted her life to be more like Candace's?

That she simply hadn't seen enough of Candace's life. That was the only answer.

Being whatever bundle of abnormalcy she was did have at least a few benefits, though. Not the least of which was that she was the only one capable of taking them home. And when Candace Four had looked over at her and backed her up to Six and the insufferable Two - she'd never been happier in her entire life. Okay, well, in this entire day, at least. Either way, that moment had marked the turning point in this most terrible of days - and it was about time, honestly. Six had looked supremely suspicious, but had kept her word and handed over the gun.

It hadn't taken Candace very long to strip it apart - whatever hard black metal it was made from, although proving resistant to simply being stripped apart with a hammer, still quickly yielded when she came at it with a blowtorch and plasma cutter. And inside whatever was that horribly convoluted mechanism for firing the thing - she'd found it. Pizzazium Infinionite, the - well, the answer to all their problems, in a dramatic but still entirely true way of saying it.

"Exactly how much longer is this going to take?" Candace Two broke in. Well, her back was turned to the exact speaker, but she was still pretty sure it was indeed Two. Only Two had yet been so… constantly brash and bossy and abrasive. Seriously, she was in the middle of trying to turn twenty-year-old scrap metal and the innards of a space laser gun of some sort into a device capable of cutting a hole in the fabric of existence as we know it - and do it alone, without her brother's or children's or anyone's help, really. Could she not be afforded a little patience? Seriously. That Two woman was starting to get on her nerves with this.

"I'm almost finished," she replied, even though 'almost' was a little bit of a stretch. "I've got to refabricate the entire-"

"I don't care," someone cut her off. Probably either Five or Seven. Seriously, what was those two's problems? It was getting kind of insane by now. At least some of Five's issues could be explained by rationalizing it as normal person's response to incest - something Candace really should have had, she sometimes thought - but Seven had just always been… very rude was an understatement. Maybe it had something to do with the 'temporal anomaly' thing. That was a possibility.

This time around, though, her success was practically assured. There… wasn't much pizzazium in Six's gun. Not much at all. Just a single, teeny-tiny chip of the glowing green mineral that was going to save them all. Working carefully in the presence of the heavily radioactive material, she carefully dropped the fragment into a special compartment on the second cold fusion reactor she'd built in the space of this terrible day. Trying to run the rift-opener solely off a chip of pizzazium that tiny had a good chance to completely exhaust its energy before all - or even any - of them could get through.

Candace Three rapidly ran her eyes over the equations she'd scrawled into the dirt at the base of her project. If she used ordinary cold fusion to excite the energy flow as high as possible - about seventy-odd percent, and then switched on the pizzazium-powered part of the device, she could squeeze enough energy from it to open a rift. Not a very long-lasting rift, for sure - it probably wouldn't be able to hold itself together for more than two or three minutes. And it wouldn't be very big either - maybe a single square meter, if that?

Either way, it would be and big and persistent enough to get them all out. Out into… whatever dimension happened to sitting there, because trying to cut to a specific dimension with this little pizzazium was destined to be a failure.

The hours wore on as she worked, but she wasn't even paying attention to that or to all her other selves doing whatever they were doing behind her as she poured the very heart and soul of her creativity and capability into the machine. It was an ugly one, no doubt. Exposed wires and circuitry ran this way and that, and the internal operations of the contraptions were open for the world to see. It would be easier to fix any last-minute mishaps this way.

The ancient, cracked bulbs on the control panel began to glow, dimly at first, and gradually becoming brighter and brighter as the dusty machinery whirred slowly back to life after two decades of languishing in the dirt.

"I'm done!" she announced, dropping the blowtorch and pushing up the faceplate of the welding mask.

That got all of the other Candaces' attention. They all turned to face her at once, faces expectant - and in the case of Two and Six and possibly Seven, suspicious. Well, let them be suspicious all they wanted. Soon enough they'd see who was right - and it certainly wasn't them.

"What is that thing?" asked Candace Seven.

Candace couldn't stop herself from smiling proudly. "It's a space-time ripper, of course, only this one's different - it runs on pizzazium infinionite. So it won't, you know, explode."

"It'd better not." Two tapped the end of her stick on the ground in a mostly irritating but still kind of unsettling way. "Or else our group is going to be less one Candace, and it's not going to be me."

"It looks kinda like a vaporator," Six mused. "But I guess it… isn't?"

"No," Candace Three agreed. "It's got nothing whatsoever to do with water vapor, trust me." She paused. "Now, when I open the rift, it's not going to stick around for long, so you all'd better hurry and get through it. I've got it set to drain every last ounce of power from that pizzazium and keep the thing open as long as possible, but 'as long as possible' isn't gonna be very long."

"Oh, trust me," Five remarked, glaring at her. "I don't intend to hang around here any longer than I absolutely have to."

"Where are we even going?" the little girl - Candace One - asked.

To which Candace shrugged. "Can't say I know. But any plane of reality is better than no plane of reality at all."

"Wait…" Candace Two spoke up. "You want to take us all somewhere, and you don't even know where that place will be?" She frowned. "Smells like a trap to me. If you're working-"

"-I'm not working for whoever your friend Doonkelberry is," Candace cut her off, rolling her eyes. She could feel Two glowering at her from behind those stupid dark lenses of hers and pressed on. "No, I don't know where we'll end up." She shrugged again and looked around at the… hers standing around. "But you all are perfectly welcome to stay behind if you want to."

"Your death is not going affect me," Two coolly replied. "Don't push me."

Candace turned back to her machine, not wanting to unnecessarily antagonize the woman who still hadn't stopped swinging her weapon like threatening people was something she did every day. (And who knew, with her temper, maybe it was.) Two may have been scary, because Three did appreciate having her limbs intact - and she could only assume where knot on One's head had come from - but she wasn't much more than that. And annoying, of course, because she so clearly knew nothing what she was talking about and yet insisted that she be in charge even so.

It wasn't the straight-up insults from Two that really got under her skin, though - for that, all she had to do was force herself to look in the direction of Five and Seven, to see the judgemental looks in their eyes, the words they whispered between themselves.

 _Weird. Freak. Unnatural._

Those were the sorts of things Candace had been worrying about her whole life - and had secretly assumed to be true, too - but to hear it confirmed stung deeper than she could have ever imagined. More than anything else, it made her wish she could just curl up in a ball around Phineas and squeeze him until he teased her about suffocating. (It wasn't her fault, he was just so much littler and easy to squeeze, especially when she was feeling like she was right now.)

Two, though - freaking Two - just rubbed her wrong in a much less paralyzing sort of way. She wondered if Two's Phineas and Ferb had to deal with this same overbearing, condescending, bossy attitude all the time. If so, she certainly didn't envy them.

Pushing the thought out of her mind, she grabbed ahold of the start lever and give it a pull. Sparks flew from the exposed working of the machine, as the reactor grumbled to life with a frightening amount of shaking and groaning. She could feel the waves of reverberation coming off the metal surface of the reactor. But it wasn't enough. She stuck her arm beneath the row of sliders on the control panel, and in one smooth motion, shoved them all up, up, and up - straight past the yellow and deep into the red zone. It was time to overclock the reactor.

Almost instantly, a change was noticeable. The coolant inside the reactor drained away, and the small gauge indicating internal heat began shooting up, higher and higher. A burst of power shot through the wire and processors, and static electricity arced through the air in blindingly white bolts lashing out here and there, leaping from the reactor to the random piles of metal scrap lying around, showering the area with sparks.

All over her body, Candace could feel her hair standing up on end.

"It's the lightning!" somebody yelled behind her. It was her own voice - and could have been any of the six other Candaces. Or that… Kevin person.

Thick, acrid smoke began pouring from the seams in the metal, stinging her skin and making her eyes tear up.

"Three?!" somebody else shouted - somebody that Candace instinctively assumed to be Two, because… Two. "What are you doing?! Are you insane?!"

Was she? Maybe. But this insanity was the only way they were going to get home. Just a little bit longer was all she needed. _Sixty-two percent energy capacity._

The antenna on top of the spacetime ripper began to glow. The indicators on the reactor's control panel were all desperately warning of impending meltdown. But she still needed a little bit longer. Sixty-seven percent energy capacity already.

The rusted metal plates that made up the body of the reactor began to pull themselves apart, the terrible shaking slowly dislodging the screws bit by tiny bit. The freshly soldered seams stretched and strained, struggling to contain the violent fission behind the thin metal walls.

 _Sixty-nine. And..._

 _Seventy._

That was good as they were going to get on cold fusion. It was time. Candace reached over and slammed her hand down on the lone red button that she hadn't yet depressed. A loud 'clunking' noise could be heard, and all at once, the brilliant white streaks of electricity turned a vibrant shade of green as they sizzled past. The smoke was pouring even more thickly now, collecting in a dense cloud around them, merging with the omnipresent mist bank of unreality.

This was the moment of truth.

And she heard it.

Despite the Candaces behind her making a ruckus, despite the crackling of the electric bolts flashing all around, despite the rumbling of the reactor and whine of the ripper, despite the hissing as the smoke leaked out of it - she heard it.

A sound both high and low pitched, both loud and quiet, hushed and deafening. Shrieky and whistley and rumbly and deep all at once, and at the same time none of these things at all.

Because the machine was working - it was functioning properly. And it was reaching out, and grabbing ahold of both space and time and pulling them apart. Peeling aside the layers of the space-time continuum - puncturing a violent hole through that otherwise impenetrable extra-dimensional barrier.

And before her very eyes, before the eyes of all the Candaces standing around, a tiny rift was pulled open.

And she could see through it - could see… darkness. And what looked like… grass? Oh, well - it was good enough for her!

"Here's our chance!" she shouted, dropping to her hands and knees. "Come on!"

She crawled through the miniscule rift, her surroundings abruptly changing from the dull gray ground of the non-dimension to something much more familiar. It was grass. Grass slightly wet, as if from dew or a passing rain. And she collapsed onto the grass, just feeling it pressing into her back - looking up into the dark sky, with its many millions of stars shining down, and a thin sliver of moon casting its faint moonshine on the… wherever she was.

Because she was back in reality. And it no matter dimension it was - it was a dimension. And that was enough to be happy over, right?

Either way, it didn't last long. One by one, the other Candaces crept through the rift after her, one by one leaving the non-dimension behind.

And the artificial rift flickered and flashed and slowly shrank, when suddenly, just like that … it was gone. All at once, the deafening clatter of the space-time ripper was sealed off, locked up in the non-dimension forever. And a silence descended over them like a thick blanket.

But that was okay - honestly, Candace almost just felt like sitting here under the stars, in the grass, and doing absolutely nothing. Because she was home. Or at least closer to home than before. There was at least a chance this was her home dimension, right? Of course it was.

And then the silence of the night was shattered, too, by the sound of her voice.

"Alright," someone said. "First things first - how many of you managed to not die?" She'd not known the voice for more than however many hours had passed since this morning, but she'd have recognized the disdain in that tone anywhere. It was Two. It had to be to Two.

"Don't I deserve at least a little gratitude?" Candace said, feeling herself grow more and more irritated.

"Three's alive. Four?"

"Here."

Candace boiled internally, but stifled it as best she could. The greater good, and all that. Plus, Two had the stick.

"I'm One, I guess?"

"Five. The only normal one out of all of you."

"I made it too - Kevin, I mean."

"I'd be plenty normal if it wasn't for our brothers." Candace could almost feel how Seven - because it was obviously her - spat the word.

"Is this... Naboo?" Well, somebody rambling about weird words that no one understood - had to be Six. "It sort of… seems like it. How did we get here?"

"So we're all here. That's good," Two remarked coolly. Candace Three blinked, her eyes by now more fully adjusted to the darkness. "Now onto the next order of business - where are we?"

"That is kinda a… problem, isn't it?" Four asked. "How are we supposed to tell which dimension this is? Just walk around randomly until somebody sees something they recognize?"

"Hey, wait, guys! I do! I mean, I see something I recognize!" It was the only significantly different voice in the group - Candace One's, the already childishly high voice peaking even higher in her excitement. "Look!"

In the darkness, Candace couldn't really see where the younger her was pointing. But looking around, it wasn't all that hard to eventually land on the spot she must've been talking about.

About a hundred feet away, light up by a single spotlight, stood a large sign with a wide road running next to it. And written on that sign were the words: **Welcome to Danville. Population: 241,000+** **  
**  
"Yes!" Candace exclaimed, jumping up and pumping her fist in the air. "It's my dimension! I'm home!"

"... how do you know?" Five asked. "I live in Danville too, you know."

"And so do I," agreed Candace One. "It's … kinda why I pointed it out."

"Yeah, I think we all live in some kind of Danville," Four chimed in. "At least, in every dimension I've ever been to, we do. Which, admittedly, is only two dimensions. Or possibly three, now. Either way."

"I don't even know what a 'Danville' is," Six said. "I've never seen - oh, wait… is it some kind of city? A town? I don't see a city around here, though?"

"I mean, Danville's never been a big noticeable city anyway," Five said. "It's been a quiet, rather secluded, normal city. For a long time. And this better be my Danville, because I'm about ready to get back to that one."

"Well, this isn't my Danville," Two decided, planting her stick into the ground and leaning on it. "I can tell. No wall around the city, for one. And if it isn't Six's, I'd guess it's between the six of you." Even in the darkness of night all around, Candace Three could feel Two's glare. "And I want you to figure this out ASAP, so I get to the root of all this. Because when I get my hands on him, Doofenshmirtz is going to pay dearly for all this."

"Well…" Four said slowly. "No one's dimension has anything super weird about it, right? Like, I mean, Kevin - you don't have like three moons or something?"

"No, just the one," Kevin replied.

"My planet - dimension? has four." Six announced.

"Just the one moon in my dimension, too." Candace Three added. She was the only 'super-weird' thing to be found there.

"I mean, same here," Candace One agreed. "I think I would have noticed that by now. Why don't we-"

"We need something that our dimensions have in common - but have different version of. So we can identify it precisely." Four mused. "Just finding this world's Phineas would do the trick."

"I'm sure it would," Five cut in, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, you really have a lot to learn, don't you?" asked Seven sarcastically. "Don't you know by now? Phineas and Ferb are perfect. They can fix everything."

"No, wait, guys, I think-"

"But where would we go?" Candace asked. "I'm sure we all have different home addresses. All of our world's Phineases are in different locations - so going through them all one by one would just be long trial and error until we stumbled onto the one from here."

"It's not a problem if we go-"

"That's true." Four nodded. "We need something we all have in common, that would be in the same place from dimension to dimension, and that would also be slightly different in the different dimensions - different to tell them apart."

"If you would just quit interrup-"

"Hurry it up," Two said blithely. "We don't have time to sit around playing at this. My Tri-State Area is in danger right now."

Candace frowned. "And now that we're back in reality, people are gonna start noticing we're gone, too. Can you at least relax for one second so we can try to figure out some kind of plan? "

Two plucked her stick from the ground and took a step forward, but just crossed her arms. "Seems to be an awful lot of babbling and an awfully small amount of planning going on to my eyes." She eyed the horizon for a moment, as if hunting for something. "I'll give you five minutes on the off chance one of you knows here. No more, no less."

"I think I actually have an-"

"What is the little girl trying to say?" Six asked. "I forgot what you named her."

"Thank you!" Candace One almost snapped. "Geez. Why-ugh. Nevermind. What I was going to say is- why don't we go home? Like - to where I live."

"You mean our parents' house?" Four echoed. "I mean… how does that solve the problem? Just because my parents live on 2038 Maple Drive doesn't mean-"

Candace Three perked up at the words. Wait, did she say 2038 Maple Drive?

"See!" Candace One sprang up. "That's my address too! 2038 Maple Drive."

"And mine," Candace Three added wonderingly.

"As if I needed anything more in common with you… people," Five muttered. "Yeah, same here."

Seven shrugged. "Thanks to the joys of not-existing, I don't even have parents. So yeah, there's that."

"I also grew up at that address," Kevin spoke up, finally breaking her silence. "Though my father no longer lives there."

"Okay, that... it's actually a pretty good shot," Candace said. "Out of all eight of us, six could live in this dimension based on the street sign and road. Four of that six live - or lived - at a 2038 Maple Drive. But the 2038 Maple Drive in this dimension will only fit to one of us. It's not perfect, but it's still pretty good."

"But what if the address doesn't match any of our homes' - or what if it doesn't even exist at all?" Four asked.

"Well…" Three replied, "In that case, we're somehow in a ninth dimension that either doesn't have a Candace, or whose Candace somehow escaped being pulled into the non-dimension. Or… potentially got left there, I guess." She shivered at even the thought of such a possibility.

"Yeah, I don't know," Four returned. "Maybe this isn't such a great plan after all. Anybody got another?"

"Hmm… I-" Candace was abruptly cut off.

"Your five minutes are up." Candace Two plucked her staff from the ground again and waved it in the air. "Hope you got your 'plan' all figured out, because it's time we got a move on." She paused. "Well? You have three seconds to decide before I pick somewhere at random."

"No, wait, you can't do-" Candace tried to protest.

"Three."

"Will you listen for-"

"Two."

"2038 Maple Drive!" Candace Four broke in. "That's where."

"One." Candace Two glanced around. "Fair enough. It's near the city center anyway. Any volunteers for advance guard?"

Candace hesitated. She was pretty terrible with remembering directions - a setback usually overcome easily by the voice-directed hoverjet she and Phineas used to get around at home. But if she tried to lead them now, there was a good chance she'd get them hopelessly lost.

"Oh my gosh," Candace Five sighed. "Can none of you people even recall a simple map?" She rolled her eyes. "Or maybe my good sense of direction is what kept me from making such major wrong turns in my life choices too. Whatever. Follow me - I know the way there from here. It's about thirty miles-"

"Thirty miles?!" Candace One exclaimed. "How on earth do you-"

"-but it's only a mile or two to the nearest bus depot," Five finished. "Seriously, quit trying to interrupt me."

"Alright." Candace Two prodded Five in the back, pushing her ahead of the group, then laid her stick across her own shoulders. "Everybody - you'll follow me. Five, hope you got enough experience picking out landmines. Let's move."

* * *

Today had been the worst day ever.

Now, Candace had had way more than was rightly her share of bad days in her life, but she was fairly sure that her previous statement was no exaggeration. She inwardly cursed whatever stupid scheme her stupid once-brothers had cooked up this time to cause her all this misery.

Because losing literally everything and having to rebuild her life from scratch fifteen years in the past wasn't enough for them - oh no. Why should it be? She was Candace Gertrude Flynn, and suffering at the hands of her self-centered brothers and their stupid schemes had been her entire life.

So she couldn't exactly say she was surprised when it had all gone down today, no. She'd just been wondering when they were going to strike next was all. The morning had been all right, as mornings for a person who doesn't exist tend to go. At least the hiccuping wasn't so bad today as it had been some times in the past - so that was a plus, if a small one. She could feel them coming, building up inside her, like a sneeze - then a prickly feeling would flash up and down her spine.

And though she couldn't exactly see herself in the mirror, the blurry blob of red-and-orange would flicker in and out, before reappearing again.

Oh, well. They didn't bother her so much anymore, at least. The first time it had happened, it had been really scary. Not that anyone cared, because no one ever did. But it had been. Terrifying. But she'd gotten over it time, by herself, because herself really was the only person she could count on not to stab her in the back - even twenty years after the fact.

And it had happened again - she'd been in the process of getting ready for work, when out of nowhere this horrid screeching noise had sounded, and she'd fallen forwards into the floor. And landed in a heap on another sidewalk in some gray city where there was apparently no one around.

And no matter how loudly she cursed her once-brothers or the duplicate that replaced her, no one came for her. Because why would they? No one cared about her - she may as well not have existed at all.

Oh wait.

Either way, she'd pretty much resigned herself to her fate. If her once-brothers wanted to get rid of her that much - that they'd dump her into whatever slice of wherever that place was - then fine. She could sit there - and do nothing, because what could she do? Nothing, because like always, she was just some silly plaything in her once-brothers fun and games. And if she should happen to get dumped into an alternate dimension to sit around and likely starve, or just straight-up offed in some 'accident' well, 'oops' would probably be the only words spoken over whatever funeral she should get. If she should get one at all - and likely not. Which was a pleasant thought.

Ugh.

Either way, none of that had happened because she'd had the… questionable luck to run into some other copies of… herself. She already knew that there was at least one copy of her running around, but hadn't quite expected seven of them.

There was 'One', the whiny little kid version of herself who pretty much did nothing but complain and complain. Candace snorted to herself. Kid had a hard life ahead of her, no doubt.

There was 'Two', some bossy obnoxious person who thought that she got to order everybody around by threatening to beat them down with whatever was that pole-thing she hung onto. It had been sweet, sweet indirect revenge when Candace'd watched Six manage to get the jump on Two and threaten her with that gun. Of course, Two hadn't exactly looked very impressed, but you had to be thankful for small favors. It wasn't like she was going to get anything better out of her life.

Of course, you couldn't forget Three, Four, and Six, the versions of herself that had somehow gotten so horribly twisted by exposure to their brothers that they'd ended up straight-up marrying Phineas, complete with children and all. It was the most disturbing and despicable thing that Candace had ever seen, frankly, and did nothing to help her opinion on her once-brothers. She'd never quite thought of them doing something that would sink that low, but she could totally believe it even so.

It did, however, add to the ever-growing pile of incidents that made her almost thankful that she'd managed to get away from her once-brothers before they'd done something so contemptible to her too.

There were indeed very few things to be thankful for when you were a temporal anomaly, but 'not having to interact with the people who ruined your life' was a pretty decent one. Not that Phineas and Ferb would let her have even that small comfort, as demonstrated by today's events.

The last one of the group was Eight - some weirdo who called herself Kevin and came from a dimension filled with talking zebras or something.

And since Two had decided that Candace would be 'Seven', that made all eight of them. Oh yeah, there was Five, too - who seemed to be the only really 'normal' one out of the bunch, and definitely the only one with a rational response to the knowledge that three out of the eight of them were committing incest in some form.

Five was… alright. She was married to Jeremy Johnson, she had three children - also named Amanda and Xavier and Fred - and generally seemed to be living the life that Candace herself had once had, before it was so rudely snatched away from her. Plus, Five was the only one who seemed to realize exactly how self-centered and selfish and dangerous and stupid their brothers' schemes really were.

Which was nice enough. Though she couldn't help but wonder when Phineas and Ferb would come take Five away from her too, because she didn't deserve to have anything nice, did she? That was pretty much how it seemed, how it had always seemed. There wasn't really a 'seemed' to it anymore.

At least they'd managed to get out of whatever that gray, empty city was. One of the really messed-up Candaces - Three - was somehow also capable to emulating their brother's stupid contraptions. It probably had everything to do with whatever brainwashing had convinced her that having children with her brother was an acceptable idea in the first place.

They'd managed escape through some sort of noisy lightning-spewing portal that Three had managed to conjure up with a fancy machine built out gun parts. And just in time, too, given that as soon as she'd crawled through into the grass and darkness that lay beyond, it had closed up behind her and left no trace of it ever being there in the first place.

Ha, she'd thought to herself. Actually got one up on my stupid brothers this time. Wonder how long it'll be before they come back for revenge?

Then she'd had the pleasure of listening to her other selves bicker back and forth about where they should go - what dimension this was - and yadda yadda yadda.

And of course, since they were the horribly broken Candaces, they all assumed that the high-and-mighty Phineas and Ferb would be able to fix everything. Oh, sure, right. Because everyone loved her once-brothers, and they seemed nice enough, but that sure hadn't helped her any, had it?

No, of course not.

Still, she wasn't about to get left out here all alone, so she'd grudgingly gotten up off the wet grass and followed her other selves to the bus stop - that would eventually take them back to 2038 Maple Drive for the purpose of determining exactly what dimension this was.

Not that Candace was particularly thrilled to see that house and all its painful memories again, but just like the rest of her life, the choice wasn't really up to her. Sucking it up and suffering in silence had been her life since about day one anyway.

As they trudged onwards through the night, following the directions of Five, Candace felt herself hiccup again. She also felt Six poke her in the shoulder, and she'd smacked her hand off just so soon as the lingering tingles from the hiccup faded.

"Back off!" she snapped at her touchy-feely self. "I've told you I'm not a hologram, so quit touching me. Next time I'm not smacking your hand, either."

"Sorry," Six half-heartedly apologized, drawing back. "It's just so uncanny."

"Yeah, well, I don't care," she retorted. "You're freaking weird too, and I don't go poking you, do I? Quit it."

Six muttered something under her breath and slowly drifted over towards the other side of the group. It was well enough - Candace didn't particularly want anything to do with her anyway. She was one of the really messed-up ones, which really soured her mood.

Five had claimed that it was about a mile to the bus station. A mile wasn't that long of a distance, really, but in the dark it was taking quite a while. Up ahead of her, she could hear Three and Four talking about something, but she couldn't be bothered to get close enough to eavesdrop on them.

It was slightly chill out, as you might expect from the last day of summer - no wait, upon checking her watch, she realized that it was now the first day of fall. So there was that, too. No wonder she'd been feeling so drowsy.

"Up there," Five loudly announced. "There's the bus depot. I told you so."

And there it was. It wasn't particularly a big bus depot, but the windows were lit up and a neon sign read that the next bus was departing in less than ten minutes. Well, at least they were finally having some good luck.

There was one bus station attendant behind the desk, who looked entirely disinterested in life. Candace could relate to that.

"Hey," he greeted lazily, putting his book down on the desk. "Where to?"

Candace Two stepped forwards, as she would. "We want a bus route to a 2038 Maple Drive. Which one gets us closest to there?"

The attendant blinked drowsily and gestured to a map tacked to the wall behind him. "Sounds like it's in the suburbs somewhere. So you'd probably want to take the twelve-twenty bus and get off at Walker Street."

"Excellent," Two replied. "Follow me, people."

"You're gonna have to pay for those tickets, you know," he pointed out, looking at all of them. Candace felt herself hiccup again, but he hardly spared her a second glance. Well, no one did, despite what you might think. "It's two-fifty a person, so for the eight of you that'll be twenty bucks." He blinked. "Eighteen seventy-five, because kids get half-price."

"Hey!" One exclaimed. "I am not a kid! I'm fifteen, for goodness' sake!"

Two didn't seem particularly fazed. "And what gives you the right to dictate where I can and cannot go, soldier?" she spat."

"I would pay, I swear," Three apologized, turning her pockets inside out. "I left my wallet at home. Didn't think I'd need it."

"This is the kind of thing that should never happen," Five grumbled. "I swear. Trapped in a bus depot in an alternate dimension because, oh look, I don't have any spare cash. What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"If you think this is bad," Candace replied, "Then you haven't seen anything yet. This is hardly the worst those… incompetents can pull."

For all of Five's good points, she was still remarkably naive to just how harmful Phineas and Ferb's escapades could be. Because she'd had enough luck to avoid being permanently erased from existence, she still didn't quite grasp it. But Candace was sure that it was only a matter of time. Five would see - and she just knew it. For now, she intended to try and enjoy the company of this woman who at least partly understood her.

Before somebody came and ruined this too. Two somebodies, most likely.

"I have some of these," Six remarked, digging some weird-looking thing out of her pocket and offering it up. "It should be enough to pay for a ride."

The attendant took a second glance at Six's offer and shook his head. "Nah. Don't take… whatever those are. Only regular money - cash or credit. Eighteen seventy-five, or no tickets."

Six started to protest, saying something it being a perfectly good currency of some kind. Candace mostly tuned it out, turning her attention back to Two.

"Now listen here," Two had replied, stepping forward and gesturing about with her stick. "I don't know you are, and you clearly don't know who I am, but only one of us is getting our way about this. If you don't figure out which one real quick, then only one of us going to be leaving in one piece, too. Do I make myself clear?"

"Eighteen seventy-five," the attendant repeated, leaning back and yawning again. "It's the best I can do."

Two growled and looked like she was about explode, but Four suddenly spoke up from the back of the depot. "Wait!"

Everyone turned to her, except the attendant, who put his feet up on his desk and leaned back in his chair, looking as if he was about to fall asleep.

"What is it?" Two demanded, banging her stick on the ground.

Four pushed her way to front of the group, to the desk, and pointed at the map on the wall. "Look! Right there, in the middle of downtown! It's Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated! It says so right there!"

"...and?" Two sharply replied. "I don't exactly, you know, care. Now go be quiet while I deal with this situation."

"Oh…" Four seemed downcast for a moment. "You have a Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated in your dimension too? Or is this something to do with Doofenshmirtz again?"

Two shook her head. "I told you before that this isn't my dimension. In fact, I remember being quite emphatic about it."

"Anyone else?" Four repeated herself. "Just… you know, asking."

Candace turned back to the group, a little disinterested herself. Even so, however, out of the corner of her eye, saw Five pale slightly, and start looking like she was about to faint dead away. Seriously, the fact that Phineas and Ferb had founded some sort of corporation in one dimension in order to torture her more efficiently should not come as a surprise for anyone who knew them.

Three shook her head. "No, nothing that I know of." She reached into her pocket and produced a little red piece of plastic. "This is only an umbrella corporation anyway - it doesn't even have a building at all."

"You can't be asking me," One answered. "Phineas and Ferb are way to young to have a - a company or whatever."

"That's what you think," Three said. "My Phineas and Ferb founded CD Inc. when they were like six and seven still."

"What?" One started spluttering. Candace couldn't blame her - even her brothers hadn't been that cruel at that age. Well… probably. She wasn't taking any bets on it.

"My brothers aren't involved with a corporation of any type?" Kevin cut in. "As far as I know, of course, though I would know, especially if it was located in my city."

"So I was right!" Four was suddenly way too excited over this. "This is my home! My dimension! I'm home!" She spun in place a few times.

"That's great!" Three exclaimed. "So Phineas will be at your house - probably waiting up for you? Or, no, likely sleeping, I think."

"You have got to be kidding me!" Five burst. "Of all the places I could end up, it's here again?! Oh, no, this is… just too much. I can't take it anymore!"

Candace smirked. Now Five was getting it. "Sucks, doesn't it?" she said. "And you know what? They'll never stop ruining stuff. Ever."

Wait a second, though - if this was Four's dimension… oh, great. Four was one of the really brainwashed ones, wasn't she? One of the 'let's commit incest because there's totally nothing wrong with screwing my own brother' ones. That did suck, and Candace felt herself hiccup again as she sighed and leaned against the bus depot wall.

She wouldn't have been half-surprised if Phineas and Ferb did this to her on purpose - just to eke out another little ounce of suffering. Because dealing with the incestuous Candaces wasn't bad enough - now they had to deal with a Phineas too?

Candace could feel her face hardening as she contemplated of meeting one of her once-brothers again. She hadn't seen them face-to-face for a long time now, and she liked it that way. Of course, this Phineas wouldn't be her brother any more than her once-brother was… but it was close enough that she hardly thought the difference worth thinking about.

This was the reason she'd moved herself out of Danville in the first place - never having to run face-to-face into the people who had single handedly taken her life and squashed it. Well, it looked like she didn't have a choice here. If she did, it'd pretty much been made for her, just like most of the choices about her life. Like "should I become a temporal anomaly", for one.

"Oh, this is amazing!" Four was gushing still, digging into her pocket for something or the other.

"Congratulations," the depot attendant said. He leaned back and started snoring just a second later.

Four pulled her phone out her pocket and fiddled with it for a second. "Just hang on, people, I got this now." She grinned widely. "It works! It's connected! This is so amazing!"

Candace Two frowned. "What exactly are you doing? It'd better be worth our time. Because if it isn't, I swear..."

The phone blinked in her hand, and strange blue light shone out of it. In only another second, a series of holographic letters resolved in the middle of the air.

'Dialing Home...' they said.

"Please pick up, please pick up…" Four murmured.

"Ooh, holograms!" Three chimed in, poking at them. They fizzled slightly around her finger. "Aw, not the hard-light kind."

"Now that is a hologram," Six announced. "Nice."

"Oh. My. Gosh." Five groaned. "I cannot believe this. Just nope. Cannot. Why? Why me?"

Candace felt like informing that she'd better start believing it, because this was hardly the worst thing that Phineas and Ferb were capable of, but the hologram from Four's phone blinked and flickered and resolved into an image of… Phineas.

Candace blinked herself, rubbing her eyes slightly. He looked almost the same as she remembered him, and she could feel her anger boiling afresh inside her at his image. Here… here was the person who'd ruined her life, who'd she'd made every effort to escape, only to be effortlessly foiled time and time again.

In Five's own words - what did she ever do to deserve this?

"Candace?" the Phineas-hologram asked sleepily. "Where are you - what's going on?"

"Phineas!" Four burst. "I'm - at some bus depot with, uh, me, myself, and I and few others, too. It's-"

"Wait, what?" he echoed. "Did you - did you have an accident with a Molecular Splitter or something?"

Two poked the hologram with the end of her stick. "Don't like holograms. Never trusted that Doofen-tech. Nothing but bad news, if you ask me."

"Hard light holograms are great!" Three replied. "Did I ever tell you about the time-"

"Never thought I'd have to see this again," Five muttered. "It's lovely, isn't it? Ugh."

"Hi, Phineas from another dimension!" Six announced loudly.

The bus attendant snorted in his sleep and rolled over his chair.

"-another dimension?" Phineas-hologram echoed. "Wait.. what's going on here?" He wiped his eyes again, and blinked rapidly several times.

"It's a long story," Four broke in. "The long and short of it is that we're gonna have, uh, seven houseguests for tonight." She glanced over her shoulder. "Seven, uh, mes."

"Hey, Petra," Kevin said, waving at the hologram. "Or… whatever your name is."

"Shhh!" Four shushed everyone and continued as hologram-Phineas waved back slowly. "Just letting you know that we'll be as home as soon as possible. We've had a rough day dimension-hopping and, ugh, it's just so good to be home again."

"...so good to be home again," Five retorted. "I'm sure it's great for you. Not so much for us normal ones, though."

"Or for the ones of us that don't even have a home," Candace spoke up, recalling her own tiny apartment back in the Quad-State Area. "Thanks a lot for that, Phineas. Just what I always dreamed of having."

Hologram-Phineas looked more confused than ever, but nodded. "Okay? Should I - should I wake the kids or what?"

Four glanced around again. "I… don't know? Maybe? We'll try to be quiet, but I don't know how well that'll go."

"Oh, no!" One exclaimed. "This - they're - you two - no! Ew! Why-"

Hologram-Phineas blinked. "Was that…?"

"Yes, it was me as a kid," Four replied hastily. "She… knows and that's about as smooth as you'd expect. Just… be ready for us, okay? We're gonna use the insta-transporter to get home."

"I… okay." Hologram-Phineas stretched slightly. "I'll be up."

Well, this was a great twist, wasn't it? So they manage to escape wherever the heck that gray city was, only to end up here, which really wasn't all that much better, in Candace's opinion. But if she wanted to get back to her house, then it looked like she was once again going to be forced to go and grovel at her once-brother's feet. Again. Just like the rest of her life. Because when ultimate power over the universe itself is the hands of two people so utterly irresponsible, what can you expect?

Again, today was absolutely the worst day ever. No contest. It was even competing with the day of her erasure.

Four had gotten rid of the hologram, but was still playing around with her phone, doing something with it that Candace could neither see nor particularly cared to see.

"Where do you live, then?" Two asked. "If that's where we're going, we will waste no time getting there. Everybody onto the bus!"

"No," Four cut in. "Don't get on the bus yet - this is better."

"Excuse me?" Two lowered her glasses slightly, appearing to be extremely skeptical.

"I mean," Four quickly clarified, "I've got an insta-transporter here. Why take the bus when we can just get transported instantaneously?"

"Teleportation?" Two growled. "I don't like the sound of that. Seems awfully reminiscent of Doofen-"

"Ooh, a teleporter," Three chimed in. "Beta particle transpiration or quantum ion-based? No, stupid question - no one uses beta particle stuff for teleporters anymore."

"...yeah?," Four repeated. "Either way… we can use this to get home instantly."

"Can use it to get to your home," Candace spat, growing annoyed at Four's tendency to forget that oh-so-important detail. "Not all of us are thrilled about this twist, so… keep that in mind."

Five glanced at her with a somewhat thankful expression on her face. Candace got the impression that Five knew something about this place that she didn't - probably something even more terrible than what she already knew about it. She was hard pressed to think of something that might be, but had no doubt that it was easily possible, whatever it was. When you had a life like the one she did, things stopped surprising you after a while.

"So how exactly does this work again?" Kevin asked. "We just… do what know?"

"We all need to be touching," Four explained. "And I press here on the screen and - zap - we're at ho- my home." She shot Candace a weird look, and Candace scowled back. Four could just about shut up and stop rambling about 'home', for all she cared.

Unlike just about all the other Candaces standing around in the room, or slouched against the wall, or crouched on the floor, Candace herself had no one waiting for her, no one worried about her, no one who would realize that she was missing and wonder where she went off to. Ah, well. Such was life as a temporal anomaly.

"Wait, actual teleportation?," Six was saying. "I thought that teleportation technology was too-"

"Take me to Six," Four interrupted, talking into her phone.

There was a brief flash of purple light, and quicker than the blink of an eye, Four moved across the depot floor and right next to Six, who started and stumbled backwards a step.

"I don't like teleportation," Two repeated. "Never have, never will. If it can't be explained, it has no business being around at all."

"You don't know how how teleportation works?" Three echoed. "It's easy, though. True teleportation is merely instantaneous travel, taking advantage of the plasticity of spacetime to bend the start and finish to be at once at the same location and- "

"-even so," Two continued, unfazed. "Doofen-tech. Nothing good can come from that."

"If we all use the same teleporter at the same time, won't our minds get messed up?" Candace One asked hesitantly. "Earlier this summer, Phineas and Ferb put my brain in Perry because of that."

"Sounds like they were still using beta particle-based tech," Three replied. "That's something that can happen. Should be fine as long as Four's thing doesn't run on it."

"Come on, guys," Four repeated. "Let's get out of here."

She grabbed ahold of Six, who looked somewhat confused about this whole thing, but followed suit and grabbed somebody else, who grabbed somebody else, until they got Five, who reached out and laid her hand on Candace's shoulder. So they were really going to do this, then? Whatever.

"Take us home!" Four triumphantly announced.

Well, that didn't work.

There was a tiny flash of purple light, and a small shower of sparks rained down from the air, singeing Candace's hair.

Ha, Candace thought to herself, unable to resist a tiny sardonic grin. Looks like the infallible Phineas has finally messed up. Who could have foreseen this?

"I don't get it?" Four asked. "Why isn't it working? I literally just used it two seconds ago?"

"Can't say I'm upset," Five muttered. "The longer it takes it us to get back to that house, the better, in my opinion."

"Never trusted this sort of thing," Candace Two repeated. "We're just gonna ride the bus."

"Doesn't this take a lot of concentration or something to do?" Six asked.

"Hang on," Three spoke up. "Seven, didn't you say that you're a temporal anomaly?"

Candace grimaced. "Yeah, what's it to ya? It's not really any of your business what I am - so you can just shove off."

"No, I mean - that's the thing," Three repeated. "You're a temporal anomaly. You don't exist - have no quantum ion trace. Therefore, the teleporter can't move you."

"Oh, that's great," Candace threw her hands up in the air. "Well, screw you too, universe. I didn't want to go with you anyway. I'll…" she hesitated briefly. "-take the bus."

The bus attendant started in his sleep. "Two-fifty a person, and half-off for kids and seniors." He abruptly sat up, shaking the sleep out of his eyes.

"Here," Four offered. "Since this is my dimension, my credit card'll work here. I'll pay for your ticket."

"You sure you want to do that without consulting Phineas the Great?" Candace asked sarcastically. "Wouldn't want to upset him, you know?"

Four raised one eyebrow, but shook her head and stepped over to the attendant's desk. "One ticket, please."

Candace rolled her eyes. So, once again, she was getting ousted and kicked away from the group. How absolutely unsurprising.

"Make it two," Five spoke up. "As far I'm concerned, it can take us eternity to get back… there. Maybe it'd be better if it did."

Two banged her stick on the ground, but then shrugged. "Whatever. My main concern is getting back to my home and seeing that Doofenshmirtz pays for all this. You two can go off doing whatever you want in the meantime, as far as I care." She turned to Four. "You get them their tickets and then get us home."

"That's what I was doing," Four muttered. "Geez."

The depot attendant handed Four the two slips of paper, and lazily gestured over to the clock hanging on one wall of the depot building. "There's six minutes till the bus leaves. Wake me if you need anything else."

"Here," Four repeated, handing one of the slips to Candace and one to Five. "You'll want to ride the bus to the stop on Hartford Road. The house is just one street over from there - 48 North Blackburn Circle. We'll make sure you can't miss it."

"Thanks a lot," Candace rolled her eyes. "I'll be there - ready to be humiliated and shown-up again. Can't get enough of it." She shrugged. "Just can't."

"Oh, this is gonna suck," Five mumbled under her breath. "I am so not looking forwards to this."

"Come on," Four said, turning back to the rest of the group. "Let's get out of here."

Candace watched as they grabbed onto each other and instantly disappeared in a flash of purple light, leaving her and Five alone in the bus depot. She groaned loudly and plopped herself down in a random hard metal chair against the wall.

"Ugh."

"I don't blame you," Five said, sitting down next to her. "This is really gonna suck. I… did not expect to have to see… this Phineas again."

"I didn't expect to have to see any Phineas again," Candace retorted, though the vitriol in her tone wasn't directed so much at Five. "So there's that, too." She felt herself hiccup again.

"Yeah…" Five drawled. "Sorry. That must suck."

Candace rolled her eyes. "More than you know. But don't worry. They'll catch up with you eventually, too. Maybe not in the same way as me, but eventually they will."

"I… yeah," Five replied. "That's not a pleasant thought?"

"At least you have Jeremy waiting for you," Candace said slowly. "I don't even have that. It's…" she shook her head fiercely. "And it's all Phineas and Ferb's fault too. Those airheads don't care who they hurt so long as they get to have their fun."

"Don't even get me started worrying about that," Five said, staring off into space. "What's he gonna think? Just waking up come morning to find I've completely skipped town without a trace? I… don't wanna think about it."

"Maybe you won't have to worry at all," Candace said. "Wouldn't call it impossible for Phineas to just straight-up kick us all to the curb. Happened to me before. A brand-new dimension can't be any harder to establish another life in, can it? Like I wanted to do this for the third time in a row."

"I mean… last time I was here, he did help me get back," Five replied softly.

"Yeah, because last time he wanted to get his own messed-up life back together too - wanted to get Four back so they could get back doing… whatever." Candace shuddered. "But what reason's he got to help us this time?"

"I suppose…" Five said quietly.

Candace could tell she wasn't entirely convinced. Fair enough. She was just still a bit blind to the true destructive potential of their once-brother's thickheaded schemes. One of these days, she'd see. Then Five would realize that she was right. It was coming - Candace knew it. She'd told her so.

Outside, the bus pulled up, with a cacophony of hissing pneumatic brakes and hinges that needed to be oiled. Candace pulled herself to her feet and followed Five through the door of the depot and onto the bus. She found a seat near the back, and stared listlessly out the window as the transit vehicle pulled away and out onto the road.

It had been terrible day yesterday, and as the moon shone down coldly on the brand-new one, Candace couldn't say her hopes were very high for this one either.

But what could she do about it? Not a single thing. Such was life as a temporal anomaly - no, not even that. Such was life as Candace Gertrude Flynn, forever helpless before the wishes of her once-brothers.

You got used to it.


	7. Not Paranoia If They're Really After You

For several hours now Candace One had not had a nervous breakdown, and she had spent most of that time wondering why.

That wasn't to say, of course, that she was in the habit of having nervous breakdowns normally. Even the failures she had to suffer from almost every day, as her attempts to bust her brothers were impeded by the Mysterious Force, never brought on more than an intense wave of disappointment, coupled with exhaustion once the adrenaline had run out. Granted, there had been that one time in recent memory when her attempts to use Phineas and Ferb's teleporting-machine to bust them had resulted in her blindfolded mother running amok through their backyard and still not seeing the boys' inventions for what they were. That had certainly put her into a bad state, and the fact that her brothers and their friends had made a rap out of it hadn't helped. But even so, those were the exceptions and not the rule.

Today, however, had been a very exceptional day. And that wasn't even because of the constant loops she'd been undergoing since the moment she had activated Vanessa's father's do-over machine. Nor was it about the fact that she had fallen into a rift which, as she had herself perceived almost immediately before that, made everyone outside it forget that she'd ever existed in the first place. The fact that she had managed to bump into no less than seven adult and alternate versions of herself (provided that the one called Kevin counted – she still wasn't quite sure about that) was also manageable. Really, it was all manageable because it would all be irrelevant and relegated to being just another wacky adventure to remember once she'd get back home. There was only one fact that wasn't manageable.

That fact was that, as she knew she was about to see for herself, in the alternate universe they had landed in this time – Candace Four's – her older self happened to be in a romantic relationship with Phineas.

Now, Candace was fond of her younger brother (no matter how annoying he could be) and she treasured their good relationship, especially whenever he wasn't breaking all rules of common sense with his dangerous experiments. But the idea that that relationship could be a romantic one was so absurd that at first she'd wondered whether it was a strange misunderstanding. Or possibly that the three (!) versions of her who claimed to have such a relationship were joking about it, and Candace Five happened to have fallen for that joke.

But that wasn't the case, or at least not when it came to Candace Four. The tone of the phone call a couple of minutes ago had made that quite clear, as had the mention of 'the kids'. (Just the thought made her yearn for that nervous breakdown, because at least completely losing her mind would give her something else to concentrate on than the idea of having kids with Phineas.)

It was real. All too real. This Candace Flynn had a relationship with Phineas, kids with Phineas, and lived in a house with Phineas (okay, so that was true in the present for her as well, but it was obviously not the same thing). A house they were now standing in front of.

"So this is your home, Four?" Three asked, looking intently at the house before them. It was fairly isolated compared to the residential area the bus station had been in, and there was only one house within a hundred-yard-radius, the one right next to it. The house itself looked fairly normal, being slightly smaller and higher compared to Candace's own home. There was definitely an attic up there, like in their own home, and it was probably slightly larger than the one she knew. (She wondered if that would mean there would be more or less spiders.) There was an average-sized lawn path running up to the house, probably about four feet wide and forty feet long. The house appeared to be on a slight elevation, but not so much that the trudge up to the front door would provide them any difficulties (as opposed to so many other things). The final distinct feature of the house was that the house right next to it (there was a low fence in between) looked extraordinarily similar. Then again, for all Candace knew this was a very common house model in this world. She was hardly an architect anyway.

"It's not too shabby" Six offered up. "I've never seen this kind of building before, but it looks very liveable. Hmm… is the architecture Geonosian? It's not a flat roof, and there aren't any spires either so that rules out Coruscant…"

Candace Six's ramble about weird buildings and even weirder planets was abruptly cut off by Candace Three walking straight into… nothing, apparently? From the way she staggered back and clutched her head it looked like she had hit a brick wall, but there was no brick wall. It was just a normal garden path leading to a normal house. There wasn't even a hedge (there might be a couple of plants that she couldn't see in the dark, but they were hardly going to be anywhere near large enough to run into like that).

Candace Four blinked. "Oh, I'm sorry… hang on, give me a second to get the shield down." She walked past where Three had been stopped and into the garden. Candace One barely had time to wonder why she could walk along unimpeded before Four took two steps to the side from the garden path and then held up her hand. "Sorry, it's always harder to find it in the dark because the landmarks are so hard to see… ah, there it is." She pressed her hand forwards, which resulted in the sound of an electronic scanner being audible and then a short blip. "There you go – you should be able to pass through now. Are you all right, Three?"

Three shrugged, still absent-mindedly rubbing her forehead. "I've been through worse. You said something about a shield?"

"Yeah, to keep out the press and other unwanted visitors" Four replied. "It's strange, though – I hadn't thought it would be so sensitive that you guys wouldn't be allowed through, since you are me. I hadn't realized that it would be up anyway, because we never go out at night and it's often turned off during the day."

"It would have to be quite refined to pick up on the subtle differences in our signatures, yes" Three mused. She grinned in a way that was kind of unnerving for Candace to see on her own face. "Interesting… tell me, did you ever try whether a younger or older version of yourself would get through? Like, for instance, a version of you from before the shield was set up?"

"No, no we haven't" Four replied. "That is interesting, I suppose."

"At least the place isn't _entirely_ unguarded," Candace Two snorted, which was probably the first non-negative thing One had heard her say in hours, if not since meeting her in the first place. "Though if this is all you're depending on to keep Doofenshmirtz out, you're gonna have a bad time anyway. Fancy gadgets never helped anything without old-fashioned elbow grease to prop them up."

"I mean... it seems convenient at least?" Kevin piped up. "Journalists really can be the worst sometimes, aren't they?"

Candace Four nodded. "Yeah, they really are. They think they need to know everything about Phineas' life, and they dig into every scrap of info they can find. Our secret was almost blown a year ago because one reporter kept digging into his love life and…"

Candace One wondered why her other self's voice had suddenly trailed off, but when she caught the expression on her face and the direction in which she was looking there was little that remained unclear. Phineas Flynn stood in the doorway of the house, looking at their group in amazement and flashing them a slightly awkward smile.

It was so weird to see her brother as an adult. He was a lot taller – probably almost the same height she was (!) – but overall his posture was the same, neither extremely thin nor chubby. His face was very similar to how she knew it, but the facial expression was different. Instead of the enthusiastic bright grin her own brother often had, this Phineas simply smiled (broadly, but it was still 'just' a smile nevertheless). He was wearing blue pajamas and a bathrobe, because apparently the appearance of all these different versions of his sister had not provided him with enough incentive to change. Well, that was understandable enough – One wasn't sure whether she would have changed, had she been in his situation. He was coming out of bed, after all (his and Four's bed, probably, that nasty voice in her brain whispered) and would probably be headed back there very soon after they were all settled in.

All those thoughts nevertheless disappeared from her brain the moment Candace Four ran up to her brother and hugged him. And it wasn't even the fact that she was so eager to hug her little brother, but that the moment Four loosened her grip on her sibling the two shared a look that Candace had occasionally seen her parents share in their more intimate moments (right before she would get booted out of the door), one that just screamed 'lovers'. She instantly snapped her eyes shut, but she instantly knew that this moment of blatantly clear evidence of her older self's incestuous relationship would stay with her forever.

As she looked around, though, it was clear that none of the other Candaces shared her concerns. Well, Candace Two gave Four and Phineas a disgusted look, but that might just as well have been because they were stalling than because of that romantic hug. (They were totally stalling, though. And it was pretty cold outside.) Three looked on with interest, Six was smiling broadly because apparently she was into this (which honestly shouldn't have been a surprise considering what Candace had learned about her earlier but it still came as a shock) and then there was Kevin. Who… well, she didn't look nearly as perturbed as she should be, but she did look perturbed, so at least that was something. If not for that zebra, she would have been able to work with that. And soon Five and Seven would be here, and they'd be able to balance the situation (even if she kind of hoped they wouldn't raise the subject again, because that could well make it worse by constantly reminding her of what was going on.)

Three whistled softly. "Oi. He's so tall here. How'd _that_ happen?"

"All right everyone, come on in" Phineas said in a voice that didn't sound too much deeper than the one she was familiar with. "No sense waiting out here on the porch, right?"

Candace knew that that at least was true, and so one by one they shuffled into the house. They first entered a long hallway that, after a sharp turn to the right, lead them directly towards the living room. Before they got there, however, they passed a door which none of the others seemed to give a second thought – but Candace looked, and the names on it sent a chill down her spine.

Xavier and Amanda.

Absolutely refusing to think about this unless it would become necessary (and that was not such a bad attitude to have about this whole thing anyway) Candace entered the living room (which was a normal-looking room with a large TV screen), where they all got told to sit down on the couches. She was planning to sit down at one end next to Candace Three, but then Candace Four took her place and she had to just sort of lean down against the edge of the couch instead. No one seemed to notice. Well, except from Two, who was just… standing there for some reason, refusing to sit down. Honestly, Candace shouldn't have been surprised by that.

Phineas stepped over to Four, looking confused. "Didn't you say on the phone that there were eight of you?" he asked.

Four nodded. "Yeah, but two of us refused to come along while teleporting – well, one of them really couldn't, but that's a long story. They're taking the bus." She rolled her eyes. "Remember the me that I swapped places with last year? She's one of those two."

Phineas nodded thoughtfully. "I see. I'd been wondering whether she would be there." He cleared his throat and smiled at them. "Okay, so I'm sure you all want to go to bed, but while you are still here, is there anything I need to call you? I mean, obviously you're all Candace… unless you got Queen Baldegunde of Drusselstein involved somehow… but did you establish some kind of naming convention?"

"We came up with a regular naming order, yes" Two replied. "I'm Two, the little girl is One, that's Three, your… sister is Four, the oddly-dressed one who keeps staring at everything is Six and that one over there is Kevin. Five and Seven are still absent. And since I suppose you're planning on sending us to bed – don't bother. Someone is out there who caused this, and now that we're back into what you would call dimensional space, even if it's just this dimension rather than our own, he'll know it and act accordingly. The petty vengeance of Heinz Doofenshmirtz will fall on your house soon, and although your shield is impressive that's not going to keep him out forever."

Phineas blinked, clearly having difficulty processing that explanation. "Uh… right" he mumbled. "Thank you." He suddenly smiled. "Hang on, you're from the second dimension, aren't you? I knew I'd seen those sun glasses somewhere before."

"You just had to one-up me, didn't you?" Four said, shaking her head. "I think you got that faster than I did – but then again, you were also given more evidence than I was, so it doesn't really count." She gave him another one of those fond looks which Candace One really wished she could unsee. Maybe it might be for the best to keep her eyes closed for the rest of the evening.

"I am from what you would call the Second Dimension, yes" Two agreed. "But there are more important things to talk about than our pasts right now. We'll need to be on our guard against Doofenshmirtz. It would be for the best if we arranged a system in which everyone keeps watch for a predetermined number of hours." She glared out of the window, as if expecting Vanessa's Dad to come by any minute now. "Previous events have given me reason to doubt whether you can all be relied upon to keep us safe, but we will have to make do, and as long as there is overlap between our watches individual failure can be overcome by overall success."

No one was quite sure how to respond to that, and when Three did, it was about something that was entirely unrelated. Which was probably her just taking some kind of small revenge on Two – fortunately they were on opposite sides of the living room table – although One wasn't sure whether Three had even been listening to Two's blathering in the first place, given that she had spent the past minute or so looking back and forth at Phineas and Four. Maybe Candace Three was finally realizing the insanity of being in a relationship with her own brother now that she was looking at it from the outside? It didn't sound very logical, but Candace's world had just been completely turned upside down. By now, she was prepared to believe anything about her bizarro future selves.

Candace forced her attention back to Three's question – something about sleeping arrangements – and was just in time to see Phineas nod. "Yeah, that's probably inevitable" he said. "I think we're going to be very strained as it is even with using the couches. Unless we wake up Ferb and Isabella, but it is past 1 AM now. It probably would have been more convenient if you had been able to get here earlier, you know."

There was a twinkle in his eyes which betrayed his obvious desire to know just why they were here, but that wasn't what really struck Candace. "Wait, Ferb and Isabella?" she asked. "Like… Ferb, together with Isabella?" It was an absurd conclusion to reach, but like she'd just concluded, it wasn't like anything else made any more sense here. Apparently, this was a universe in which incest was normal, making Ferb/Isabella downright feasible. And Phineas had definitely phrased that sentence in a way that left few other explanations.

Her non-brother nodded. "Yeah, Ferb is together with Isabella in our world. They've been married for years now. Their daughter is dating our son, in fact…" He blinked. "Wait, I guess that would be a little awkward for you to hear, wouldn't it?"

Of course he had to catch on now, and he couldn't have caught on a little earlier. That would have been too kind, and the universe just wasn't kind to Candace Gertrude Flynn. She forced herself not to clench her teeth and shrugged, and after giving her a final concerned look Phineas returned to smiling as he looked at the rest of the group. He was still a lot like her brother in that regard, if not in everything else (well, she supposed that technically she didn't know what her younger brother's opinions were on committing incest with his older sister, but she highly doubted that it would appeal to him. And now for crying out loud, could she stop thinking about this?)

"Okay, back to the sleeping arrangements" Phineas said. "Candace and I…" he briefly glanced at his sister, who nodded. "…will sleep in our own bed. I have a spare bedroom which can be used, as well as three beds in the guest room, but they are a little cramped."

"I wouldn't mind the cramped space, Phineas" Six offered. "It's nothing I haven't seen before." It was odd to see the relaxed and upbeat expression on her face. Where arriving in this dimension had turned Candace One into a nervous wreck and made Five and Seven even more indignant, it had really cheered Six up for whatever reason. There was a clear difference between how she carried herself now and the way she'd shoved that gun against Two's throat earlier.

"Thank you… Six, was it?" Six nodded. "Candace Six. Anyone else want to volunteer?"

"I'll take another cramped bed, if you insist on assigning one to all of us" Two replied. "It's not like I'm going to be doing a lot of sleeping." Her voice was firm and dared anyone to challenge that conclusion.

"So, Kevin, Three…" Four said. "Which bed would you prefer? The last one in the guest room, or the one upstairs?"

Candace felt indignant about the fact that her other self was so blatantly ignoring her – she was right there! How hard could it be to look aside and see her? – but Phineas spoke up. "Aren't you forgetting something, Candace?" he said.

Thank you. She wasn't expecting Phineas, of all people, to come to her defense, but she'd take it.

"What about the two versions of you who took the bus? If we're leaving the beds up to Kevin and Candace number Three, that only leaves them with the couch."

Of course.

Candace Four shrugged. "First come, first serve" she replied in a tone that indicated that she really wouldn't care all that much if Five and Seven had to sleep on the floor for the rest of the night.

It was an unfair attitude, and that at least was something where Phineas appeared to share her concerns, because he shook his head. "That's not exactly fair, sis" he pointed out. "You know I agree with you on Other Dimension Candace's views being wrong, but that doesn't mean we should antagonize her by doing things like this. Let her have a choice about what bed she wants to sleep in, or if she prefers the couch."

"Well, we can't all fit in one of the beds, and I'm not giving up my place" Candace Four retorted. "Not to mention that I doubt she's going to want to sleep in your bedroom anyway. It is right next door to ours, after all, and that probably makes her uncomfortable. Even if it is only for one night."

"Yeah, we can't make this kind of arrangement permanent" Phineas mused. "It all depends on how long it'll take to get them all back home – I'll have to call Ferb first thing in the morning. Do you think there is anyone who does want to sleep in the room next to us?"

"I… I would be okay with that?" Three spoke up. "It's not…" Her eyes shot from Candace Four and Phineas to the people around them, and she looked nervous. "I don't mind being near you guys. It's…" She took a deep breath. "Well, let's just say it's not that different from what I'm used to at home."

"She's one of the mes who are involved with you as well" Four explained. "It's really been cool to meet her. We get along pretty well." She shot Three a hasty wink at that, and the other woman froze up at first but then responded to it. One took note of the fact that this meant that they weren't saying anything about the argument and Three's inventing hobby just yet. Maybe that was what the conversation the two had had during their walk to the bus station had all been about? Oh, what the heck. Who cared. These two were committing incest with their brothers, after all. The silly insecurities they coped with were hardly any of One's business.

"We have" Candace Three replied, shaking her head. "Although you are… different there. I was thinking earlier that your sister was shorter than I was, and it made me wonder whether you would be shorter than my brother, but you're not – you're taller. That's…" She shook her head. "Has it always been this way for you?"

"Well, I can't really say that, given that I have no real basis for comparison?" Phineas said, frowning. Now that Three had mentioned it, he did look pretty tall – although the fact that her brother had shot up from the measly height she was familiar with wasn't much of a surprise. The only way for him to go was up, after all. "I have been this tall for two decades now – although my Candace is still taller than I am, actually. Look, I'll stand back to back to her and you'll be able to tell."

"Yeah, we're not doing that" Two commented. Candace One had almost been able to forget that she was there. "There are more important things for us to do. If you insist on assigning everyone into sleeping quarters, you will get that over with now."

"Um, okay?" Phineas replied, giving Two an awkward look. "Fair enough – I guess a handful of inches of height difference more or less doesn't matter all that much. Let me see, we had Three going to sleep in the spare bed, leaving just Five and Seven and… did you say Kevin?"

"Kevin Clarke, at your service" Kevin responded.

"Interesting" Phineas mused, his face looking confused for all of two seconds before he smiled again. (Of course he would – he was Phineas, after all.) "Do you have any particular preference for sleeping on either the couch or the spare beds? I'm terribly sorry we don't have anything better to offer you…"

"No, that's all right" Kevin cut in. "I don't mind sleeping on the couch, if you can get me a blanket at least. It's been a long day – I'm sure falling asleep won't be too difficult."

Phineas nodded. "Fair enough. So if we offer Five the bed, as a consolation offer so to speak, that'll mean Seven will have to sleep on the couch – or the other way around, of course, if they prefer that. Well, it's only for one night anyway."

Candace waited until she was absolutely sure he (and the others) had finished speaking, and then she cleared her throat. It should be a surefire way to get attention, and it finally worked too. Phineas looked genuinely aghast at having forgotten her, if only for a moment, while Candace Four's smile also fell.

"I'm really sorry for forgetting about you in all this… One, I believe?" Phineas' smile came back for a moment. "You guys could really use some name tags. Hmm, I'm not sure where we could put you for the night. I suppose I could call Ferb and Isabella after all and ask them…"

"Hang on," Candace Four interrupted, "that won't be necessary. Xavier and Amanda have wide beds. If they shove them together, another person of about their age could easily fit in there."

For a moment, Candace was so taken aback that she had absolutely nothing to say. Xavier and Amanda? The idea of sleeping in one bed (or two) with her future children while she was their age was weird enough, but the idea that they would be Phineas' children as well made her wish to have as little to do with this as possible. How could they do this to her? They knew her, didn't they? Other Candace had been her! They could have expected her to hate this, and she did, she was not going to go along with this, and…

And just as she was about to speak up about it, the door bell rang.

From across the room, Candace could see Candace Two tense up, but she didn't say a word. Four just walked up to the window to look outside. "That's them all right" she commented. "I'll let them in. If you show up, they're probably going to dither out on the porch out of sheer spite."

That was an absurd way for Four to dismiss Five and Seven's criticism of her ridiculous lifestyle, but as One had expected both Three and Phineas gave a small nod. Four walked out of the living room into the hallway, and for some reason Two got up and followed her. She took up a position at the edge of the doorway, leading One to shake her head. Of course Two was going to be paranoid about this. She didn't know what it said about her that she wasn't surprised about some of her counterparts' personality quirks anymore, but it was definitely convenient.

Seven barged into the room first, followed by Five and Four (who were in the process of shooting suspicious glances towards each other). She glitched, and for a moment Phineas actually looked taken aback, before smiling again in what was probably an attempt to appear reassuring.

If it was, Seven did not take it as such. She scowled. "I should have known you would like seeing me hiccup, considering that you were the one who put me in this state" she muttered. "First things first – I may be staying here with you until you can get me out of here, but I'm not going to like it nor even pretend that I do. So you'd better hurry up and get me back to my dimension, because if I catch you dithering – and I know you will, because actually helping people out in a normal way has never been one of your priorities – know that there are many ways in which I can make your life here a living hell. I doubt many people out there know about the shenanigans you and your sister get up to, do they? It would be such a shame if that secret were to leak to, say, the local police station. Or the press. Or both."

Candace One had to give her other self credit for being able to maintain such a nasty vibe when making her rant, in a way that had somehow managed to anger just about everybody else. Even Five looked taken aback at what had undoubtedly been an unfair characterization of their little brother, no matter what creepy incestuous desires he might harbor. Four and Three, by contrast, looked furious, whereas Six was holding her blaster in a very threatening manner (not that Seven looked even remotely intimidated.)

Phineas, however, didn't show such an extreme reaction even if it was clear that he was shocked and… was that a hurt expression on his face? Now this was tugging at her own conscience, too. He nevertheless made a brave attempt at a disarming smile. "Hello to you too, other Candace."

Seven just snorted before walking past him. None of the other Candaces made room for her on either of the couches, so instead she sat down on the ground while keeping her eyes firmly focused on Phineas. It was as if she didn't even notice – or care? – that any of the others were present.

"So…" Phineas continued, turning to Five. "Which one of you is Five and which is Seven?"

"I'm Five" Candace Five responded. "We… have met before. The other one is Seven."

Phineas nodded. "Yes, Candace told me so. It's nice to see you again."

Five nodded awkwardly in return. "Sure."

It was somewhat surprising to see Phineas holding onto his composure in the face of all these very awkward responses, but since he was Phineas it also wasn't. He smiled. "Well then! I'm afraid we've only got two places to sleep left by now, here on the couch and on a bed in the guest room. I'd call Ferb and Isabella to ask whether anyone can stay there, but it's almost half past one and I'm sure Ferb and I are going to have a busy day ahead anyway."

He waited, probably to see whether Seven would react to the 'Ferb and Isabella' thing like Candace One herself had, but if that was why he waited he was sorely disappointed – Seven barely even blinked. "Sure, I'll sleep on the couch" she muttered. "That's what my life has come down to. Sleeping in the house of my brother, having to camp out on the couch because all the other beds are occupied by other versions of myself – including his bed, because that's not weird or anything. Not for Phineas Flynn."

Phineas blinked. "Well, it'll only be for one night anyway" he said. "So I guess that would put you on the guest room bed, Five. I don't know if you noticed it the last time you were here, but it's opposite the stairway, next to Xavier and Amanda's room." Did he have to keep mentioning them? "It is usually reserved for one of Ferb and Izzy's kids, so it'll probably be a little cramped. Oh, and you'll be sleeping in one room with Two and Six. I hope you don't mind."

Five let out a long-suffering sigh. "Sure" she muttered. "Why not."

"Great!" Phineas exclaimed. "Candace and I can show you to your rooms. Will you take Three upstairs, Candace? Then I'll show Two, Five and Six to the guest room."

Once again, Candace One noted, she was being ignored – although that might just be because they'd get around to accommodating her later, especially as Phineas hadn't mentioned Kevin and Seven either. Honestly, by now she wondered whether she was fortunate to get a place to sleep at all.

She sat down slightly more comfortably as the others left, and stared around the room. Seven was still sitting on the ground and staring directly ahead, whereas Kevin was already standing up and inspecting the couch she was supposed to sleep on. Candace allowed her eyes to wander through the room, feeling a little curious despite herself. Though mostly dominated by the two couches and the TV, there was a large cabinet as well, which had pictures on it and – yeah, she wasn't looking at those. But aside from that, all she could see from here was that there were glasses and plates in the cabinet, which wasn't too unusual. More remarkable was that halfway up there was a shelf with a lot of cluttered paper. As she stood up and took a few steps closer to it, it soon became obvious that they were used to take notes on, and the handwriting combined with the scientific character of the notes made it clear who used them most frequently. There was also some kind of board game hidden under the notes – knowing herself, probably Skiddley Whiffers – but before she could check for its identity Four re-entered the room, carrying two blankets. She gave Candace a look and the younger woman decided to sit back down instead.

"So…" she muttered. "About my sleeping arrangements, I'm not going to…"

She could barely even finish the sentence before Phineas re-entered. There was a soft smile of sorts on his face, but he looked concerned nevertheless. "I tried to get Candace Two to lay down, but I don't think any of the things I said convinced her" he said softly. "She appears to be really concerned about Doofenshmirtz. Possibly even more so than she lets on."

"Well, given what we saw in the other dimension all those years ago, I suppose you can't really blame her?" Candace Four said. "If she doesn't want to sleep now, let her stay awake – sooner or later exhaustion will catch up with her." She barely suppressed a yawn. "We should really tell her at some point that the Doofenshmirtz from our dimension is harmless – although I doubt she's going to listen to us there." She smiled wryly and then frowned again. "But you didn't have any trouble with Five, then? I can't see you putting her to bed going smoothly."

Phineas chuckled. "I was hardly putting her to bed, Candace" he replied. "And no, a couple of disgruntled looks aside, she didn't complain at all. I know I can be a little oblivious and not pick up things that are happening beneath the surface, but I'm pretty sure of that." He shook his head. "Candace, you have to let go of her grudge against her. If you don't, pretty soon you'll be the one to blame for your strained relationship, not her. I know you're better than that."

Four scowled. "It's not just a grudge" she said. "Five told you on that night when our minds were swapped that you'd been trying to disgust her from the day you were born. Basically, that you have been trying to destroy her life all along. I can't let this go, and I won't let it go. Heck, Three even punched her over something else she said in the non-dimension. She deserves everything I dish out at her."

Her brother's older self (would he technically be her 'older brother' now? That was just weird) looked sheepish and raised his arm. "What do you mean, disgusting her? Didn't I tell you that she was just talking about me annoying her?"

Candace Four smiled, and then she reached out and took her brother's hand away from his ear. "You have got to do something about your tells, Phineas" she said. "Even Milly can figure out when you are lying by now."

Phineas relented. "All right, all right" he admitted. "How did you figure that out about the 'disgusting' thing, though? You can't have just read the exact wording on my face."

"Maybe I'm just a very perceptive person" Four replied, grinning.

Phineas shook his head. "Candace…"

"Mandy told me."

"That's what I figured." Phineas nodded and then looked past his sister towards One. "Oh, right, One – you're One, aren't you?" Candace One warily nodded. "Why don't you come along? Xavier and Amanda's room is right through this door."

"Yeah, I've seen it" Candace One replied. "Look, I'm… I'm not going to bunk with your… your kids."

"Yes, yes you are" Four said, putting her hands to her hips. "Look, kid, it's gonna be this or either the basement or the attic, and I happen to know that you can't stand spiders." The expression on One's face was enough to prove her right. "This is the only option we've got left for now. If it makes you feel any better, Xavier and Amanda weren't exactly expecting to have to have a sleepover with you either." She turned to Phineas. "Did you decide not to wake them up after all, or did you just ask them to stay in their rooms?"

"The latter" Phineas replied. "I figured that some of the versions of you, if they were anything like the version of you I'd met last year, would probably not look kindly on having to meet our children right as they came in. The fact that they would have to confront the fact that you and I are together would be bad enough."

One wondered whether Phineas appreciated the irony that he was saying this in front of her, another Candace who was freaked out at the idea of being in a relationship with her brother and now had to share a bedroom – and two beds – with their kids. The expression on his face said that no, of course he didn't. And neither did Four, from the way she responded by grinning at him and nudging him in the side. "You know, that's pretty perceptive of you."

"I can catch on to what is and isn't the smartest thing to do sometimes" Phineas replied, also grinning. "I'm not stupid, you know?"

"Oh, I know" Four replied, putting a hand on his back. "If you really were stupid, I don't think I would have started dating you. You're just a little… dense, sometimes."

"So you started dating me for my intelligence?" Phineas teased back, returning the favor. "I'm not sure what exactly that says about us."

Four gave him another nudge and then wrapped her arms around his neck. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

"I know" Phineas murmured, and Candace One had the distinct impression that they were going to kiss. Were they really not seeing her? Or worse, did they know she was there but just not care because she was so young and thus insignificant? She wanted to speak up and draw their attention, but the idea that this was actually possibly happening in front of her paralyzed her throat.

Candace had had some vague ideas about what meeting her future self would be like, but being forced to clear her throat so that older Candace wouldn't start smooching her brother in front of her definitely hadn't been one of them.

Before she could intervene, though, the love scene in front of her was cut off by Kevin, who asked from the living room: "You guys realize that we can still hear you, right?" Candace Seven also mumbled something incoherent about her absolutely ruined life. One wondered why the woman was so much less fiery now than she had been earlier. She had to be really tired.

Phineas and Candace Four hastily separated and composed themselves as One breathed a sigh of relief (even though it was a sigh that was held back by the knowledge that she could very well walk in on a scene like this again at any time in the near future as long as she stayed here). "Right, your bedroom" Phineas said to her. He looked a little disheveled and uncomfortable, which was a really strange look on him – not that there had been a lot that wasn't strange about this version of her younger brother thus far. "Come along."

The three of them headed out of the living room altogether and turned the corner into the bedroom she'd already seen. Two kids were sitting on two beds that had been hastily shoved together. The girl caught Candace's attention first, primarily because of how familiar she looked. There was absolutely no doubt that it was the same girl she'd seen in that one glimpse she had had of her in the future – which was both reassuring because it was something out of the future she had wanted for herself, and frightening because she was Phineas' kid here. She looked to be roughly Candace's age, probably a year or two younger, and she was wearing a pink pajama with yellow stripes. The purple bow on the nightstand made it clear that she was dealing with the same Amanda, but Candace forgot all about that for a moment when Amanda smiled. It was a smile that resembled her own to some degree, but there was something off. It was more cheerful and casual – it was a Phineas smile.

Trying to get away from that connection, Candace turned to the male child only to find out that he was even worse. When she first thought about having a child named Xavier she hadn't had a very concrete idea of what he would look like, but once she'd gotten together with Jeremy she had always imagined him to be yellow haired and oval-faced – kind of like a miniature Jeremy. Obviously, this boy was nothing like that. Xavier looked almost exactly like Phineas, with the single exception that his hair looked different – somewhat more orangeish – and that he sported a more mellow smile. Not that that said much, considering that she'd seen Phineas himself smile in a more mellow way than she was used to ever since she got here. He was wearing blue pajamas – of a lighter shade than his father's – and was clearly about ten or eleven, in other words, Phineas' age.

"All right, kids, this is my younger self" Four said, bluntly cutting through her thoughts. "Candace, these are Xavier and Amanda. Now I'm going to have to go to bed because I'm tired. Try not to burn the place down overnight, okay? I'm talking to you too, Xave." Her s-nephew blushed. "See you in the morning."

With Four headed off, Phineas remained, and he gave her and the kids a kind smile before kneeling down in front of her. Candace One had no idea how she felt about that – sure, it was nice to finally have an adult take her somewhat seriously, and now that he was crouched down in front of her his height looked a lot like that of the Phineas she knew again… but then again, Phineas just shouldn't have to bend down in order to be able to speak to her.

"I know this must be hard for you, and it probably wasn't what you were expecting when you came here" he said softly. "But try to cope with it, okay? Whatever happened between myself and the other Candace, you're still a version of my sister and I care about you. Try not to get lost into one of those moments in which you can't decide whether you can't stand yourself or the world around you."

Candace blushed. "I'll… I'll try" she muttered.

"That's all I can ask" Phineas said, patting her shoulder and then getting up and leaving the room. Candace was now all alone with Xavier and Amanda, who were staring at her inquisitively. Amanda eventually spoke up first. "Welcome!" she gushed, in a style that was far too Phineas-like (even if Candace knew that should really stop drawing all these parallels because she was only making this worse for herself). "It's so cool to be able to meet you. I've always wanted to meet Mom or Dad when they were our age, but getting to have a sleepover with you is even better."

Candace slumped down on the floor and glared at her… daughter? No. Not her daughter. Four's daughter. Not her daughter at all. "I'm not going to have a sleepover with you two" she said darkly. "I'll stay here on the ground, thank you very much."

Xavier groaned. "See, I told you she would say something like that" he said, his vocal similarity to his father sending another chill down Candace's spine (and after everything she had gone through today, she was beginning to think that she really should have run out of those things by now). "She just arrived here, and she's still in shock about Mom and Dad. She's not going to want to sleep with us."

"You said that, yes" Amanda casually retorted. "But you also said that that might be temporary, and she would get more used to it as time passed, and that a friendly attitude would help her adjust better."

…Candace didn't know anything about Xavier yet, but if he really thought that that would happen, he was as much of a dunce as his father was.

"This is not what I meant and you know that, Mandy" Xavier replied with some annoyance, although it was gone when he looked at her. "Look, I know this… this has got to be a lot to take in" he said. "You're already stranded outside of your own dimension, and then you end up in a world in which your close relationship with your little brother turned into a romantic one. If I was sent twenty or thirty years into an alternate future tomorrow and told that the version of me there was in a relationship with and had kids with Amanda, I would probably be shocked as well." He frowned. "Even if that's not exactly the best example, because it's not exactly uncharted territory for me – I did already consider the concept of a relationship with Mandy before, and we resolved that that just wasn't for us. It just felt off."

Amanda frowned. "Hey, what was that about it feeling off? You're not going to criticize my super awesome kissing skills, are you?"

Xavier rolled his eyes. "You didn't even want to date me either, you know."

"Still not hearing those kissing skills mentioned. They're an important part of the story."

The orange-haired boy shook his head and smiled faintly. "Fine. Despite Amanda's super awesome kissing skills, I decided that dating her just wasn't for me and that I was in love with Angie Fletcher instead, so we agreed to leave it as a one-time experiment."

"That's more like it."

Candace One folded her arms, hoping for a moment that if she just concentrated really hard she would end up back in her own bedroom and it would all just turn out to have been a nightmare. Heck, she would even take that stupid time loop over being stranded here. When she opened her eyes again and instead just saw Xavier and Amanda staring at her with concern, she sighed. "How did this happen?" she demanded. "What did Phineas do? I know back home I'm in love with Jeremy Johnson, and our relationship is perfect! Whatever did he do to ruin that? And why?"

Xavier and Amanda exchanged glances. "It was hardly Dad – er, Uncle Phineas' fault" Xavier spoke up. She had no idea why he was correcting himself, that was only making the matter worse after all. "I don't know exactly why you and Mr. Johnson broke up, but I do know that you got into a lot of stress when he was heading off to college, and you did everything you could to try to stay close to him but that just kind of backfired."

Candace frowned. Okay – given her insecurities and the fact that there were plenty of fish in the sea, attractive fish with much more interesting scales and who were far less likely to run off to hunt in the middle of a romantic underwater coupling (maybe her metaphor was getting a little off track there) she could actually buy that part. It was realistic – frighteningly realistic, but realistic nonetheless. "But what about Phineas?" she pressed. "Even if Jeremy broke up with me," and it was hard to even imagine thinking past such a devastating scenario, "that doesn't explain why Iended up together with him."

"Well," Amanda replied, a casual teasing smile on her face, "when a brother and a sister love each other very much…"

"You're making this awkward, Amanda" Xavier said. "We are a brother and a sister too, after all, and when you're not being insufferable I do love you."

"You're an incestuous brother and sister" Candace felt compelled to point out. It wasn't something that could just be ignored, after all.

Xavier frowned. "No, I just told you – that's just our parents. We… oh, wait, I get what you mean." He smiled. "You're referring to the fact that we are the product of incest. Hmm, does that make us 'incestuous siblings'? Or our parents' 'incestuous children'? I doubt it, but it's certainly interesting from an etymological perspective. I wonder..."

"I'm not here to talk about etymology!" Candace snapped. "I'm asking how and why any version of me and my brother could ever think getting into a romantic relationship was a good idea! For crying out loud, I've seen the future before this summer, and I've seen you there, Amanda, and you talked about your Uncle Phineas! You know, as in not-your-father!"

Amanda shrugged. "Well, he is still our uncle" she said. "And I suppose it's possible that you originally weren't supposed to end up with Dad, but something else changed to ensure that you did" she said. "Right, Xavier?"

"That is true" Xavier agreed. "I think Dad and Mom and Uncle Ferb and Aunt Isabella went on the same trip that you just mentioned, but obviously something must have changed since then – possibly as a result of that very journey – that lead to the relationship pattern you observed in the future being disrupted."

"Yeah, right" Candace scoffed. "We didn't do anything to mess up the future – not even Phineas and Ferb, no matter how much they like to stick their noses in places where it doesn't belong. And we barely saw you anyway, Amanda." She could remember that day as clear as if it was a week ago (although she didn't remember 'one-week-ago' that clearly, to be honest, because it had been a long time since then due to that Do-Over invention she'd just had to activate). Amanda, showing up at her mother's side, asking about Uncle Phineas and Ferb, and then about Aunt Isabella. She remembered her own joke at Isabella's expense, because Isabella was so fixated on Phineas that she didn't even realize the other brother was also a technical option, and then ladies' man Ferb giving her that wink and thumbs-up. Now that she was thinking about it, it occurred to Candace to wonder whether Isabella still remembered that day. It might be a fun idea to team up with Ferb and freak her out a little more. She knew Ferb already had a thing for Vanessa Doofenshmirtz, but he was probably flexible enough not to rule out a prank like that. Poor Isabella, thinking that all of a sudden her crush's brother would really be into her…

…hang on.

Her mind suddenly flashed back to the conversation she'd had with Phineas while most of her counterparts were in the room. The way he had mentioned Ferb… and Isabella. Being together.

So maybe it wasn't so absurd. Maybe Ferb Fletcher and Isabella Garcia-Shapiro could be in a relationship. And if that was true, then she was probably the one who had helped bring it about. That one remark about them being the couple of the future rather than the omnipresent and inevitable assumption of Isabella and Phineas could have set off a chain reaction in their brains, giving them the push needed to re-evaluate each other. She hadn't noticed any of that happening yet, but it had only been one summer and she didn't pay too close attention anyway. It could be a long-term process, one that started with that one comment and ended with a completely different relationship…

…a relationship that would leave Phineas single. Candace had never assumed that he was particularly interested in Isabella, but they would probably end up together anyway because Isabella wanted it so badly and Phineas was hardly going to protest. It wasn't like he had anyone else, because Isabella was the only one of the girls who he was really close to. That would put him in quite a dilemma – if Isabella was going to prefer Ferb over him, who could he date? He wasn't really close to any other Fireside Girl, unless…

Unless… you counted…

…her.

The realization struck her like a lightning bolt, and once more Candace huddled forwards against her raised knees in an attempt to hide herself from the outside world. This… this couldn't be true. It wasn't allowed to be true. But if it was true, then she finally had her answer. She knew who was at fault for the fact that this Candace had ended up with Phineas, and that automatically meant that the road towards an incestuous relationship had already been entered in her own world as well.

Because that mysterious, creepy person who had created this incestuous world was none other than herself.

She looked up. Or at least she thought she did. She was in this room. She was back home, in her backyard at Maple Drive – but that was only a vague thought in her mind, it wasn't real. But it would be. Oh, it would be. And then she'd have to walk up to the brother she tried to bust just yesterday, and ask him to be her boyfriend, probably. Because it was inevitable, wasn't it? Unavoidable. No sense in dithering. She'd caused this. Her love for Jeremy, her desire to lead a normal life, her wish to become a mature adult soon – everything was out of the window. All because of her, and… wait, what was that sound? It sounded like something heaving… oh, wait. It was just her breath. Just her breathing in and out. In, and out, and in, and out…

Finally, she registered herself thinking somewhere in the back of her mind. My nervous breakdown. I was wondering when you'd arrive. Wish you'd gotten here sooner, though.

"…mom?" she heard a voice saying to her. Xavier. "I mean, Candace? Are you all right?"

"She doesn't look all right" Amanda's voice replied.

"She's having a mental breakdown" Xavier said, in a voice that sounded as if he was trying to be steadfast but just not achieving it. That was funny – it wasn't something she'd normally associate with Phineas. Maybe he wasn't quite like his father after all. "Come on, we need to help her calm down." She felt hands wrapping around her arms – first two, and then another two. She vaguely registered being dragged across the floor, and then the comfort of a bed below her. Ouch. That kinda hurt, despite it being a blanket – they could have taken a little more care to ensure they didn't harm her spine. Or maybe she should have tried to do something herself, she didn't really know.

"Do you think we should call Dad?" she heard Amanda whisper.

"Odds are that she's freaking out about Dad, so that's not going to help us any" Xavier replied. "Let me handle this, okay?"

Candace let out a wry chuckle, to which both of her future children reacted with some surprise. "It doesn't matter" she murmured. "Nothing matters, does it? Not if I'm freaked out, not if I don't want this. I'll end up with him one way or another, and it's my fault."

There was a pause before the others responded, but then she felt Xavier pat her shoulder. "That's not true, Candace. It's not your fault, and… it's not set in stone? I'm sure it's not. Your future is whatever you make it, okay?"

The time-displaced teenager snorted. "Yeah, I've heard that one before" she hiccupped. "But I – I already did it. I told Isabella… to consider Ferb." She vaguely smiled. "And she will. And then she'll marry him. And Phineas? He'll have no one else to turn to – no one but me."

"That – that's not how it happened at all" Xavier protested. "Dad didn't fall in love with Mom because Aunt Isabella had chosen Uncle Ferb instead, he's felt that way about her all along!"

Candace blinked, some of the fog in her brain clearing away. "Wait, what?"

"Thanks for showing me so clearly how to break news gently, Xavier" Amanda said dryly. "I don't know what in the world I would have done if you hadn't been here."

Xavier cringed. "Okay, I'll admit that as far as being reassuring goes, that wasn't the best thing to say…"

Candace, however, had managed to use her moment of clarity to snap out of the insanity inside her mind and back into the insanity outside it. (Which probably wasn't a good decision, but whatever, she was not going to waste time caring about that right now.) She grabbed Xavier's shoulders and shook the boy. "What do you mean, Phineas has been in love with me all along?" she snapped. "I know that… that can't be true! We have a normal, stable sibling relationship, and when we don't, it's because he's always annoying me with his stupid inventions! Not to mention, Phineas could never hide such a thing from me!"

Amanda frowned. "Stupid in… oh, right. You were still going through that whole busting phase at the time, weren't you?" She awkwardly waved her hand around. "I mean, now. You're still in it now."

"Phase?" Candace softly repeated. "What do you mean, phase?" She couldn't tell whether she was feeling a bit better now – on the one hand, new information was pouring in and she could form arguments again, but on the other, none of that new information was any good. "If anything, my brothers inventing dangerous things was the phase. A particularly immature and childish phase, if you ask me."

"You do realize that our Dad still invents stuff?" Amanda replied. "How else is he going to be able to help you get home?"

"I suppose that he stopped annoying me and turned it into something useful then" Candace replied. For some reason, though, that thought still didn't satisfy the busting urge in her mind. "Or maybe he is still being irresponsible now – his relationship choice says enough about that. How can someone be really grown up and want to date his sister?"

Xavier was looking at her, but from the corner of his eye she could also spot him glancing at Amanda and putting a hand on her shoulder – which was strange, to be honest. "Didn't you just think that it could happen in your own world, too?" he said calmly. "That it was going to happen?"

"Yes, I did" Candace replied. "But because of Phineas, not me. He must have put the pressure up, and my other self must've felt sorry enough to go along with it. And once you start, you can't get out of that sort of thing, even if it's only sibling love that's really keeping you there."

For a moment, Candace wondered whether she had managed to silence her counterparts' offspring with her argument. Any thought of that was forgotten, however, when Amanda practically leaped towards her and pinned down her shoulders against the bed. "Don't you dare" she whispered in a low voice, her face – so similar to Candace's own – marked by furious eyes and a mouth set in a grim solidity. "Don't you dare suggest that Dad pressured Mom into anything – she got together with him out of her own choice, and no one else's. Don't you dare suggest that Dad was ever trying to endanger Mom or anyone else with his amazing inventions, and above all, don't you even consider doubting the sincerity of Dad's feelings. He's in love with Mom, he's always been in love with Mom, and if you knew him at all you would know that!"

Candace struggled to come up with something with which she could reply to Amanda and get her off her, her eyes automatically straying towards Xavier, who was looking at his sister with concern but not coming to her defense. "In – in love?" she spluttered, well aware of the difference between the creepy, immature crush that was in her mind and the genuine romantic love that Amanda seemed to see. "He – that's not true."

"What is it, are you blind?" Amanda shouted. Xavier once more put a hand on her shoulder, which she greeted with some disdain but from which she did seem to calm down at least a little. She continued in a softer voice. "You sung that love song together, didn't you? Gitchee Gitchee Goo? Don't tell me you've forgotten about how happy Dad was to sing together with you, and that you two were singing it to each other… or for crying out loud, the way he looks at you in general! I've seen all those family photos and no matter how far back you go, whenever you two are in a picture and Dad is looking at you, there's nothing but love in his eyes! It's really adorable but that's beside the point. Oh, and did you notice the way he was always hugging you? Or how he's always the one who helps you out and comforts you? Like when you guys made that trip around the world, or when you kept the Earth from being dragged into another ice age, or when you stopped that polar bear invasion?"

"It was a brown bear invasion, and that was probably after this Candace's time" Xavier cut in.

Amanda shook her head. "That's irrelevant. Oh, and then there's that time you guys reunited Love Händel. Didn't Dad say that was one of the first times you agreed to help them out, and that you had been surprised by how good it felt to help him and Uncle Ferb, and the two of you even shared a dance at your parents' concert?"

"No, Dad merely said they danced together, not that they danced with each other" Xavier pointed out. "He did say that they hung around with each other for much of the night and they enjoyed the music together, but they didn't have a dance in a romantic way until that night when Mom finally found out about Dad's crush on her."

Amanda shrugged, finally letting poor Candace go. "Whatever. Still half counts to me. They danced. Oh, and then there was the time when they got kidnapped by Mitch and spent two hours in that space cell together…"

"That was the next summer" Xavier cut her off. "Or at least, I think it was. They ran into that Mitch guy a lot back in the day, and I think they were kidnapped multiple times, but that space cell was definitely not in the summer you're thinking of."

"What about the moment they shared in the cardboard factory?"

"Next summer."

"The one with the talking ravens?"

"Also next summer."

"The llama incident?"

"Okay, that didn't have anything to do with Mom and Dad at all." Xavier hesitated. "Not that I know of, at least." He sighed, and awkwardly patted his sister's shoulder. "Look, Mandy, you can't take every incident out of our parents' past and look at it with shipping goggles, especially when you can't even remember them correctly. You have to represent the past well, and in that past, not all of Mom and Dad's interactions back when they were just siblings were implicitly romantic. Most, maybe, but not all of them."

"Most?" Candace One indignantly squawked. It was all she was managing to get out, because… yes, Amanda had offered up a lot of examples that were unfamiliar to her, and some that were a stretch by any means, but the ones that weren't…

Xavier blinked. "Well, maybe… maybe not most…" He brought up his hand and started awkwardly scratching his forehead. "Look, let's try to all calm down, okay? It's way too late to have a fight over this. I'm sure you didn't mean to insult Mom and Dad like that, did you Candace?" He gave her a pointed look.

Candace was so tempted to give off a snappish reply, but she figured that it wasn't the wisest thing to do under the circumstances. "No, I suppose I didn't" she muttered.

Xavier's face brightened. "Excellent! That means we can all go to sleep peacefully. Amanda, do you have a set of spare pajamas that she can wear? It really is just about time that we get some rest here." She wasn't quite sure whether he said that because he was so tired, because he wanted herto forget about all this, or whatever other reasons he could have had. She was honestly getting a little tired now, but there was one obstacle she still had in mind.

"You don't think I'll get any sleep after hearing all this, right?" she scoffed. "I'll probably lay awake at night thinking about nothing else than…" She gestured upstairs. "Your parents." She had no desire to go into any more detail, both because it might well get Amanda angry again and because she really didn't want to think about it anymore than she had to.

"Fred and I invented something against that, actually!" Xavier replied, smiling. "It's called a nightmare deflector. You would have to be willing to implant two USB cables into your head, and the chances of the deflector keeping nightmares out altogether is remote, but there is an 18 percent chance it'll make you feel better in the end."

Candace gave him an unimpressed look. "So basically, you invented something that doesn't work and can't be used?"

Her counterpart's son looked unusually downhearted for a brief second, but then he resolutely shook it off. "Let me show you something else instead then, if you prefer that. It's something Dad invented a long time ago."

He rushed off rather abruptly, leaving Candace all alone with her future daughter. Well, future daughter… daughter from another dimension, really. It made her feel a little uncomfortable as she watched Amanda get up without a word and rummage through her cabinet for a set of pajamas, knowing as she did how the girl had lashed out against her just now.

It was… somehow uncomfortable, that Xavier wasn't here. Sure, he looked a lot like Phineas and the fact that he bore that name was really creeping her out, but at least he was trying to be decent to her, and he hadn't snapped at her in the way Amanda had. Heck, she even wished that Phineas was here. Telling her everything was all right in his calm, kind of annoying but still irreplaceable way.

Did you notice the way he was always hugging you? Or how he's always the one who helps you out and comforts you?

The memory made Candace feel very uncomfortable all of a sudden. She stared at the ceiling. He… of course he wasn't in love with her in their universe. That would be crazy, right? Everything Amanda had mentioned was completely platonic in reality. Like the one time they sung Gitchee Gitchee Goo – that hadn't said anything about their relationship! Sure, there had been an extraordinary amount of hearts involved, but it was just something they'd done as a sibling bonding exercise, what with her only entering the contest to become a pop singer, and then letting loose having fun with her brothers because Jeremy had told her it was okay.

(Okay, she probably shouldn't put that that way. It wasn't like she asked for permission from Jeremy on anything, but it was still good to… coordinate these things. Yes, that was it. It was just part of being a responsible girlfriend, of course.)

And then there was the song itself, which might have been fairly romantic in nature, but it hadn't been weird or anything, because it wasn't any different than any other group of singers singing a love song together. It was just a light-hearted song about casual love, and she and her brother had been singing it mostly to the audience, and…

Those hearts, though. They… they didn't fit very well with sibling bonding, did they? Candace wanted to convince herself that they did, but she knew they didn't. She knew they fit with the theme of the song – a romantic song. A song in which she distinctly remembered looking at Phineas – Phineas, the one who had organized this song in the first place, the one who had had no objections to singing his love song with her, just like shehadn't had any about sharing a stage with him.

And he… he had looked back at her…

No, no no no. She was not going to go there. Not on her life.

"So," she spoke up, trying to avoid that thought pattern in any way possible. Launching a potentially awkward conversation was the best way to avoid even more awkward thoughts, right? "I… I shouldn't have said a lot of those things I did. Good thing Xavier was there to be the mediator, right? He's kind of like Phineas, I suppose."

Amanda handed her the pajamas and chuckled. "You think Xavier is the mediator? The calm one? I may wear my heart on my sleeve, but Xavey is more like you than you think. If you slight him, he'll carry a grudge, and you'll know it. Not until the last day you're here, but then you won't be able to ever forget it again. Cause you'll be so busted." She gave Candace a pointed look, and One did feel a little like blushing now. "Look, Mom… Candace… I'm sorry I snapped at you. You are a version of my mother, but you're so much younger than she is, and I knew that hearing what Mom and Dad did would be a shock to you. I guess I just don't think about it that much, okay? It is what it is. So, my parents are siblings. No skin off my nose." She shook her head. "But it's different for Xavier, and it's even more different for you, and that is why you snapped and said all those things. I know you didn't really mean all those things you said about Dad. Not deep down. And that is why I shouldn't have lost my temper at you."

Candace concentrated on putting on her pajamas as she mulled over what Amanda was telling her. It was… it was a deeply disturbing attitude, but one she could almost understand. Given where Amanda was coming from, it made logical sense. In fact, almost everything made logical sense here, from a certain point of view. The only problem was that that particular point of view was seriously messed up.

"But know this," Amanda cut into her thoughts, taking a step forwards and suddenly looking more menacing again. "My father is amazing. He's brilliant, he's kind, and he never lets me down – you could almost say that he's my hero, in a way. And no matter the circumstances, if anyone insults him I'll never let that pass."

Candace gulped. "Got it" she whispered.

"Good!" Amanda replied, suddenly smiling. "Then I believe that we can be friends."

Candace One had barely had time to nod before Xavier burst into the room again, carrying a small black box and a black headset. Well, black… "Why is it so dusty?" she complained. He wasn't going to ask her to use this, was he?

"It's a machine that detects when you have nightmares and wakes you up alongside everyone around you" Xavier replied energetically. "It was in the basement because we rarely use it. Mandy and I almost never get nightmares, and Dad has developed some kind of sixth sense for when Mom has them, so that he'll wake up in time and shake her out of it. It's really quite useful."

"I don't doubt it" Candace replied, looking skeptically at the devices Xavier had conjured up. "Anyway, I'm not using that. I… um, I can't sleep with a headset on."

Xavier frowned. "Somehow I doubt that."

This kid just had to know everything about her life, didn't he? Candace shook her head. "Okay, so I don't want to put my trust in Phineas' inventions. I've got reasons for that. Do you have any idea what happened the last time I let him and Ferb meddle with my brain? I got turned into a platypus. As in, I had to walk around in Perry's body for almost a full day before I could get back to normal! And then there was the time they got into my mind and confronted me with all those weird anxieties that were lurking around there – I guess that wasn't technically their fault, but it was hardly a pleasant experience." She folded her arms. "So yeah, I'm not touching that."

Amanda's brother sighed. "I don't suppose it would help if I told you this one has been tested time and time again and found to be perfectly safe, would it?"

"No."

"Yeah, I figured that." Xavier was silent for a moment, pondering the question. "Then how about… how about a bedtime story? You know, to help you relax?"

Candace rolled her eyes and tried to sink even deeper into her pillow. "I'm not six anymore."

"Aha, but you don't know what kind of bedtime story I'm offering you!" Xavier beamed as he climbed onto the bed behind Amanda, forcing Candace to be all but sandwiched between her counterpart's daughter and the wall. It was so awkward – she had had sleepovers before, sure, including some in which there hadn't been much room for her to move her legs, but that had never been with her own kids. Xavier apparently didn't care, though. "That's the best part" he continued. "It's about Ducky Momo!"

"Why do you-" Candace fruitlessly protested, but she could see from the expressions on the kids' faces that denial wasn't going to help her any. Sure, these two knew her darkest secret. Could this day get any worse? "Okay. Say that someone, someone who might be me, could hypothetically be interested in that story. Wouldn't that someone already know the story you're telling because she's watched all… er, most, some of Ducky Momo?"

"No, no she wouldn't" Xavier replied. "You know that book series they've started? It was still up and running as of ten years ago, and this is one of the latest anthology books they brought out. It's a spin-off, so it shouldn't directly spoil you for anything. It's called Ducky Momo and the Dumbledown River. I don't have my-Mom's copy around here, but I should still be able to recite most of it."

Actually, Candace was pretty sure that Dumbledown River was one of the latest anthology books in her dimension, too, which was strange – but not nearly as strange as what Xavier had said afterwards. "You can recite a Ducky Momo book off the top of your head?" Even if Ducky Momo books had never been known for being long (they were about Ducky Momo, after all) that was still a claim she couldn't quite believe.

"You get used to it" Amanda said, her tone of voice dry and long-suffering.

"Chapter One!" Xavier cheerfully announced. "Dear Momoees and Momoettes, Ducky Momo's latest adventure all started on the day he wanted to sail the Dumbledown River. He went to the river, but he couldn't see his sailboat. I will now tell you what the place looked like that Ducky Momo found himself in. Can you tell where his sailboat might be?"

Behind her, Amanda groaned. And although part of Candace felt reassured by hearing the familiar words (especially when narrated in a vaguely familiar voice) she couldn't help but agree with Four's daughter on this one. It remained impossible to forget where she was, or why she was here. And that meant that this was going to be a long night.

She was trapped outside of her own dimension, away from Jeremy, away from her family. Worse, she was trapped in a world in which her other self was in a romantic relationship with her own brother. And worst of all? That fate remained entirely possible for her as well. Because Phineas Flynn – her dorky, oblivious, annoying little brother – might well harbor romantic feelings for her. And if that was true, he might very well decide to act on those feelings one day, and pursue a romantic relationship with her.

And that was why as Candace Flynn curled up against the wall and tried to relax in preparation for going to sleep, she knew she wouldn't have a good night's rest tonight, and that no one could do anything to change that. Not Amanda and Xavier, not that nightmare-repelling gizmo, and not even Ducky Momo.

Because Phineas Flynn always got his way in the end.


	8. A Hundred and Four Nights

All things considered, this day probably hadn't been as long as it might have been.

Candace Four had woken up in the morning at a normal hour, and she'd been pulled into non-dimensional space almost immediately thereafter. She'd probably spent several hours there, but if there was one thing that all versions of herself had been able to agree on it was that the night had not or only just barely fallen in the non-dimension when they had made it out of that place and back into reality. The fact that it was about midnight when she made it home thus felt accurate, and altogether that meant that she'd been up for just about fifteen hours – it was not ideal, no, but it was a much less nerve-wrecking and exhausting total than some of the long days she'd pulled over the past forty years. Even the ones that hadn't featured crazy adventures through time and space, or shenanigans involving her relationship with her brother.

But despite all of that, Candace only had to take one look at her bed after she'd trudged up the stairs to realize that she was dead on her feet. She stepped over to the edge of the bed and shuffled forwards, burying her head in her pillow. She would have probably fallen asleep in this condition if not for the wry chuckle she suddenly heard behind her. "Are you that tired, sis?"

"It's… it feels like it's been a very long day" Candace murmured. "Just give me a moment, and I'll tell you all about it."

She glanced over to her brother and caught him giving her a fond smile as he took his pajamas from beneath his pillow. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, Candace. You can just go to sleep and we'll worry about all this in the morning."

"I know" Candace replied, her voice slurring. "But I also know you're going to lay awake from curiosity for hours if I don't tell you, so I might as well get this over with."

Phineas looked slightly embarrassed. "Okay, then" he replied, taking off his pants and shirt until a thought struck him and he paused. "Say, did you get the other Candace – the one who agreed to sleep in my room – settled in?"

"It was Candace Three – and yeah, I did" Candace replied, standing up and taking her own night clothes. "I don't think she'll have any more difficulty falling asleep than I will." She glanced over at her brother's legs, a vindictive part of her suddenly wishing that Five would walk in right now. There wouldn't be any point in it, but for whatever reason the thought made her feel good.

But unfortunately, Five didn't walk in, and Phineas put his pajamas on without any further comments in her direction. Candace changed her own outfit as well and watched as her brother got in bed on the right side, as he always did. After buttoning up her pajamas and telling the lights to go out, she joined him.

It was wonderful to be in her own bed again. Granted, she'd only been absent for a day rather than the week she'd been away in the last comparable situation. But the comfort of the warm blankets, the pillow and the mattress made her feel at ease, and – after she shuffled over to him – so did her brother's body. She was at home, and above all, that meant that she was safe.

She waited for a few seconds, relishing in Phineas' hold on her as she caught her breath. Her brother waited patiently for her to catch her bearings, even if – despite the dark – she could see some anxiety in his facial features when the moonlight peering through the almost fully-drawn curtains shone on his face. He was so predictable and utterly unchangeable sometimes.

"It all started this morning" Candace began. "I was walking outside when a rift opened over me and deposited me in the non-dimension – the one we travelled to back when we were kids, when I'd gotten time to loop in one of my efforts to bust you and Ferb. I had no idea where that rift came from this time, though. I still don't right now."

Phineas blinked. "Well, that's… unusual." She could tell that he was itching to come up with ways in which to explain that mystery. "So, if you were trapped in that place again, how did you get out of there? Did you get pulled through another natural rift, or…" He suddenly caught himself and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I shouldn't ask all that right now. I'm sure you're going to provide me with a perfectly logical explanation in a moment."

"Hmm-hmm" Candace replied, deciding not to divulge into detail. This… this was going to have to be the awkward part, wasn't it? The part where she fessed up to Candace Three being an amazing inventor who could outdo her at everything she tried to do. And obviously she was going to have to tell her brother sooner or later. He'd meet Other Candace in the morning, and she would no doubt be a great help in getting them back home. But things were going so smoothly between them now, she was so happy to be back with him without anything complicating that, and Three had agreed to keep quiet for the moment, not to mention that she was feeling really tired and not up to this…

…well, those were valid reasons to postpone the explanation, weren't they?

Instead of making a moral judgment on that temptation, for now Candace simply continued her story from the part where she'd landed. "I first tried to get back home using the insta-transporter, but when that didn't work I realized that I'd heard footsteps shortly after I landed. I called out to check whether there was anyone there, and who do you think I bumped into?" She waited for a moment and smiled at her brother. "It was another version of myself."

"Yeah, I figured as much" Phineas replied. "I mean, you did bring seven yous over last night."

"You just have to steal my thunder every time, don't you?" Candace replied with a soft smile on her face. "I was trying to make this story dramatic, you know."

"I know, I know." Phineas shifted his arm, bringing it to rest somewhere over her stomach. "Go on."

"Well, even if you didn't freak out just now or when you got my phone call, I definitely did then" Candace said, remembering that moment. "I suppose my first guess was that she was the version of me we bumped into last year, but she… well, she wasn't. She and I started walking around the non-dimension, trying to track down some of the stuff that her brothers had left there the last time we'd visited that other place. Apparently in their dimension, they'd been over there for a full week."

"A week?" Phineas replied. "Huh. That sounds… distressing." She could tell that he wasn't outright disturbed – he was Phineas Flynn, he would never be disturbed by anything – but that the idea of spending a full week in that place unnerved him. Well, Candace couldn't blame him. She didn't have the sharpest memories of the first time they had been stranded there, but they had been thrown back into focus somewhat by her visit today, and she knew from that that the other place was not somewhere she wanted to stay for anywhere close to that long a time period. It was just… gloomy.

"It must have been" she agreed. "But it provided a boon for us now, because a lot of tech stuff had been left behind since their last visit, and we were still checking whether we could use any of it to get home when another rift opened nearby." See, she didn't have to go into details about the exact nature of Other Candace's skills. She was doing fine this way. "Another Candace popped out, and it turned out that she was the one we'd met before. Candace Five, as Two wants us to call her. We ought to get name tags of some sorts for that."

"Well, we definitely ought to have something for that lying around at the company" Phineas said. "Don't worry, Candace, we'll have you guys outfitted with tags in no time. So, you said the newer Candace was Candace Five, and I believe you said you were Four, and the one you met…"

"Candace Three" Four replied. "You know, it's only been a couple of hours but I'm already learning how to tell them apart. It's pretty easy once you get to know them and their basic character traits. I wonder what that says about how uncomplicated I am."

Phineas snorted. "Candace, I know that you've complained about being many negative things – and most of those complaints have been unfounded – but even you have to see that if there is one thing you can't call yourself, it's uncomplicated."

Candace Four smiled and gave him a slight nod. "Fair enough." She cleared her throat. "Anyway, last year's Candace – Candace Five – and I figured out pretty quickly who we were, and like I said earlier, she started hurling all sorts of insults at you." A vindictive smile spread across her face. "And by the time she started complaining about how your experiments were supposedly endangering us, Candace Three caught both of us off-guard and socked her in the jaw. I've got to say that I'm sorry for not having had that idea before she did."

"Candace…" Phineas murmured, and she could practically feel the disapproval vibrating in his voice. "You know that's not likely to help you in any way, don't you?" He paused. "Besides, I'd thought Other Candace and I had separated on pretty good terms last year. She still didn't approve of us, but, well, I suppose that after all those years I'm not exactly surprised anymore when that happens. But she'd given me an honest apology for what happened that last night." He sighed. "Candace, I'm on your side in everything – you know that. But are you sure you did nothing to anger her?"

"Nothing besides existing" Candace replied. "And I suppose that I shouldn't have mentioned the way she treated you at the bowling alley right after we met her. But she started dishing out insults to us from almost the moment she arrived in that other place, and she was also the one who started insulting you. I swear I didn't provoke any of that."

Phineas nodded. "All right, I'll take your word for it then." And since he was Phineas Flynn, Candace had no doubt that he meant every letter of that. She wasn't sure whether that made her brother gullible or whether he just had a keen knowledge of when it was right to put trust in people. The latter might well play a role – she'd never run out of new reasons for which to admire her lover.

"Thank you" she finally said, taking a deep breath before continuing. "So after Three had punched her, Five ran off and Three and I were alone again. It was then that I learned – well, I'd already guessed it from some of the things she said before, but that was when I heard it be confirmed – that Three was also in a romantic relationship with the you from her dimension."

Phineas whistled appreciatively. "I know that you said last year that you'd been expecting to run across others, but you've got to admit that it's pretty cool to actually meet another version of us who are together. So did they become a couple in the same way we did? Do they also have Xavier and Amanda? Are there any people in their lives who know about their relationship that don't know in this dimension… or vice-versa? The fact that apparently I'm taller than her brother and she's taller than you are suggests that there might be other differences between us, differences that we might never have expected."

Candace tried not to freeze up and think about the difference that was far more prominent on her mind than whether she and her brother were one or five inches apart – Candace Three's inventing skills. "I actually don't know or remember the answer to any of those questions?" she replied, mostly truthfully. "There were some differences that I've already noticed, but… well, for the most part, I guess you'll have to ask her herself. But yeah, I was happy to hear that too. It instantly gave me someone with whom I could get along… and I suppose I also really needed that. There was a tiger, probably left behind from one of the other dimensions when they went through those time loops and all those things got zapped out of existence – and that tiger tried to attack us. We hid in some shed, but we weren't able to barricade it. We… got pretty close to dying in there." She felt her brother's grip on her tighten and wrapped her arms closer around him in turn, to physically assure her that she was here, safe and sound. "Fortunately yet another Candace showed up before that could happen. It was the Candace from the second dimension – Candace Two – and she managed to beat down the tiger with her stick."

Phineas grinned. "I knew she would still be cool after all those years" he said. "Even if she still… talks about her universe's version of Dr. Doof a lot. What's that about? Wasn't he defeated in their world?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that he was?" Candace said, frowning. Come to think of it, that was a little confusing. "I guess she just became paranoid. I guess I could see that, if I spent so much time obsessing over getting that Doofenshmartz guy deposed. But apparently he escaped, because she's convinced that he is still out there. She still remembers that I told her to date Jeremy back then, but apparently she's too busy for romance." She frowned. "Although given her mentality, I wonder if that might not be for the best."

"Well, I guess I can sort of relate to feeling like I was too busy for romance?" Phineas mused. "It always felt weird to fall in love with someone and to have that new relationship take up so much of your life that you're just not doing all those things anymore that you used to do. But that still happened when I realized that I was in love with you, and I don't regret it. Certainly not after finding out that you returned the favor."

Candace snuggled up even closer to him, putting her head down on his chest and feeling his heartbeat, which was fairly calm – as was normal for these moments, really. Phineas usually went from a state of excitement (among others when he was inventing) to that calm, laidback presence that had become a much larger part of his life ever since the start of their relationship. It was very soothing.

"Anyway," she continued, sounding a little slurred and drowsy but not caring (Phineas was close enough to hear her anyway). "Second Dimension Candace had a fifteen-year-old version of us with her, and apparently they'd both fallen into the non-dimension before us. She's Candace One, because Candace Two assigned our numbers to us, and after she did we… well, we tried to figure out a way to get home. Three did something wrong with that... which earned her Two's ire. And then Candace Five showed up, and she was with two other Candaces. They became Six and Seven."

She could practically see the gears churning in Phineas' mind. "Is that everyone?" he wondered. "Didn't you say there was also someone named Kevin?"

"She showed up almost immediately after the other Candaces did, yes" Candace agreed. "Unfortunately, by that time Five had already spilled the beans on the fact that Three and I were in relationships with you to the rest of the crowd. Little One didn't take that well, and most of the rest weren't enthusiastic either. Especially Seven, the temporal anomaly. She sounded just as resentful of you as Five did. I'd almost say she sounded worse."

Phineas sighed. "Do you have any idea what my other self did wrong in that reality?"

Candace shrugged. "Beats me. I guess it might have had something to do with the fact that she's an anomaly now, but I don't have any evidence for that. And for all we know she's lying about you and Ferb being responsible for whatever happened to cause that, or it's based on a lot of misunderstandings. It honestly wouldn't surprise me." A memory occurred to her and she smiled faintly. "But the fact that Three and I were revealed to be in an incestuous relationship didn't even make a difference in the end, because we weren't in a minority. Candace Six – the weirdly dressed one from outer space – had apparently mentioned to Five when they first met that she was married. Five, being who she is, had interpreted that as her being married to Jeremy. But apparently, she meant that she was married to you. Well, her universe's you, but you get the point. I didn't really spend much time mulling on it at the time, but you've got to wonder how such a marriage was even possible."

"Maybe her universe is one in which relationships like ours are more broadly tolerated?" Phineas suggested.

"Yeah…" Candace mused. "But come to think of it, I think she also mentioned that she didn't even know you at first and that they didn't realize they were related when they started dating. Maybe that has something to do with it, too."

"That's… odd" Phineas muttered. "It sounds pretty cool, though. I mean, we kind of got married too, but I know that it wasn't quite the same. Not to you, at least." He shrugged. "Oh well, it is what it is. You know what, I should really make notes of all these other dimensions and Candaces. There might only be seven of you but I'm having a hard time keeping track of all of them."

Candace caught her breath. This was exactly why she didn't want to tell him anything about Three… not just yet. If he admired Six's universe for the fact that her brother had been free to marry her, how much more would he be blown away when he really met Three? It was an inevitable introduction, of course, especially because Three was likely to end up being essential to helping them get back home. But Candace Four wasn't going to be the one to raise the subject, and certainly not right now. Not when she was finally getting a chance to relax.

"We argued for a while about… lots of things, really" she continued. "Two just kept interrupting and trying to get us to focus on getting back home, but since she was obsessed with not involving Three anymore after that… incident that had happened earlier, she was hardly a reliable neutral observer. We only really got that problem fixed when Kevin showed up, if only for the fact that she managed to get us all to calm down at least for a few minutes while we tried to figure her out. She was… she was pretty weird."

"Kevin" Phineas repeated. "She told me earlier… that her name was Kevin Clarke?" He frowned. "You know, although the idea of you having a name like that is really bizarre, it still rings a bell for some reason."

"It's the zebra" Candace said with an audible sigh. "Remember that zebra that always showed up in my dreams and hallucinations and everything else back in the day, telling me stuff like "You can do this, Kevin" or "I voted for you, Kevin"? Apparently he voted for her, because in her dimension she's mayor of Danville, and zebras voting is normal because all animals are sentient there. And not just like Perry, either."

"That's… that's fascinating" Phineas replied. "Kind of strange that in such a different dimension she would still end up looking like you, even if she has a different name and possibly a different character."

Candace shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe she's not even a Candace at all, technically, and it's a coincidence that she was sucked in despite being unrelated to any of us. I mean, they do say that everyone has a doppelganger out there. You have Thaddeus, don't you? Mandy's brother?"

"He and I are hardly identical, sis" Phineas replied with a smile. "But I see your point." He put a hand on her arm, and she noticed that it was shaking. The next moment, however, Candace realized that it was her own arm which was shaking. "Look, I know that this might mean the zebra is coming back on a major scale, and that that makes you uncomfortable. But we're together, and we'll get through this, okay? He can't harm you, Candace." To cement his words, he gently lead her into a slow but loving kiss.

It was always difficult to let go of the things that bothered her, but for some reason it was a lot less hard when kissing Phineas. It was probably that feeling of coming home, of being at ease with herself and the world around her… it made her feel like she could overcome anything thrown at her, and thus when Candace ended the kiss she did so with a smile on her face that matched her brother's.

"Anyway," she continued, "although we didn't yet know it for sure at the time, with Kevin there our group was complete. We… we managed to use some materials inside Candace Six's space gun in order to use the material that the versions of you from dimension Three had left behind to get back into dimensional space. I don't think you've noticed yet, but Six is carrying some kind of futuristic super weapon around. Don't worry, it's not functional. Not at the moment, at least."

"That's interesting" Phineas mused. "So, you managed to create a rift by yourselves?"

Candace could just about tell that there was an expression of pride on her brother's face, and she felt more embarrassed than she had before. How would he feel when he found out that all that pride should be directed towards only one version of her – Candace Three? "Well, yes" she replied. "Other you and Ferb had left a lot of your old inventions lying around. It… I didn't participate in it myself so much, but we managed to find a way." She noticed Phineas' curious expression, and hastily proceeded. "We only got a small rift in the end, so we had to crawl our way through it. It was night when we got to the other side, and we were still at odds with each other. Two was bossy and kept putting pressure on the rest of us, Five and Seven were downright hostile to Three, Six and me, and none of that helped us with pinpointing where we would go in order to figure out in whose dimension we'd landed. However, one of us mentioned at some point – I don't remember which one it was, exactly – that we could go to our parents' house. After all, with the exception of the ones who obviously hadn't grown up in the Danville we knew, we'd all grown up at Maple Drive."

"Really?" Phineas replied. He looked thoughtful. "I guess that your dimensions – well, most of your dimensions – aren't as far apart as I thought at first, then. That's odd, how the rifts sucked in versions of you from completely different dimensions, like the Candace from outer space – Candace Six – and someone like Kevin, but there are also Candaces whose lives aren't very different from yours at all."

Candace was relieved enough that her brother didn't question the way they'd gotten home any further that she didn't mind him relapsing into asking all kinds of possibly unanswerable questions and raising possibly irrelevant issues. "Yeah, that's true" she agreed. "But there are major differences across most universes when it comes to our relationship. Five and Seven might be from similar universes to our own, but they obviously have a completely different opinion about how we should act around you." She took a deep breath. "They kept whining all the way as we walked into town. We had decided to head to the bus station, and we were just trying to figure out how to pay for the bus fare because apparently no one had cash on her – Six had some weird kind of space money, but obviously we couldn't use that – and then I spotted a map of the city on the wall, and that Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated was on it. Apparently it didn't exist in any of the other worlds, and that was how I figured out that I had to be home. I gave you a call, and we tried to teleport home together but couldn't because Seven is an anomaly. She took the bus with Five after I'd used my credit card to pay for their tickets and, well, you know the rest."

Phineas remained quiet for a moment, and then he shook his head and chuckled. "It really is a fascinating story" he murmured. "I would almost wish that I'd been there with you from the start, or that it could have happened to a lot of other me's rather than other you's. And I know, I know," he continued, catching the look she was giving him. "It's not all sunshine and rainbows. But that doesn't make it sound less cool." He frowned. "But did you just say that Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated doesn't exist in any of the other universes? I suppose that would be obvious for Six, and I guess I can understand it if Second Dimension Candace's brothers never got a company underway, the brothers of that teenaged version of you are probably too young, and we already knew it about Five, but…" He frowned, appearing confused, but confusion wasn't all that was to it when he finally shook his head with a sigh. "Really?"

Phineas looked distressed, and somehow that was an adorable expression on him. Candace smiled and patted his shoulder. "It's fine" she replied. "Three's brothers actually do own some kind of company… and apparently they've done so since they were just kids? But I couldn't figure out how that worked from what little I heard her say about it. And I guess Six's life was just too different for her brothers to have built a corporation. But that's okay. I mean, it's not like they don't invent anymore – I didn't get the whole picture on that, but the ones that didn't manage to build their own company probably still have some kind of inventing-related job on the side. It's in your blood to invent, after all." She gave him a slight smile. "And well, I guess Phineas Five would be an exception from that, but I think I might have inspired even him to get started again when I was in his dimension."

"You know, now that you mention it I do recall that you said something about that last year" Phineas replied. "Did you happen to ask Five whether her brother actually went through with that?"

Candace sighed. "No, I didn't. Like I mentioned earlier, Candace Five and I weren't exactly on the best of terms for much of our trip back here." She shook her head. "You should have seen her in the other place, Phineas. The way she looked at us when she was about to expose us for having a relationship with you. She's utterly self-righteous and absolutely insufferable."

Phineas appeared to be distinctly uncomfortable – which wasn't surprising, given his affection for her that would extend to an innate belief in the goodness of her interdimensional counterparts. "I see" he said. "Well, there ought to be something we can do to snap her out of that. She was never exactly happy with me last year, but at least she and I got along well enough for most of the week. If we can replicate that again, that would be a great help. Not just because I don't want to see her unhappy, but because I don't want you two to argue while Ferb and I try to help you get back home." He pondered that question for a moment. "Do you think it would help if Candace Three apologized for punching her?"

Although she knew he meant well, Candace had to restrain herself to avoid snorting at him. "No, I don't think that's going to cut it" she replied. "What Five is mad about is primarily just us for being… well, us being who we are, and for doing what we do. I guess that punch wouldn't have made her attitude towards Three any better, but I didn't punch her, and she's been treating me with the exact same disdain as she's treated Three with. Physical damage has nothing to do with it."

"Well, she might have seen you two acting in unison and being fairly similar in general, thus leading her to believe that Three punching her was no different than you punching her" Phineas speculated. "Not to mention that she might have had existing feelings of discomfort around you from last time, which she could easily draw on in this situation. I get what you mean, though. I was thinking that it probably wouldn't be that simple."

He sighed, and when the moonlight shone through the curtains again and she got a glimpse of his entire face Candace was surprised to see just how distressing this was for her spouse. She knew he didn't like arguments, of course, and that he was prepared to do just about anything to settle them, but it always caught her off-guard how disturbed he could be when people he cared about were fighting. She placed a hand on his shoulder and gently kneaded it. Phineas always responded well to being massaged.

Sure enough, when he next looked at her the smile was back on his face. "Maybe I should talk to her?" he suggested. "She might be more willing to talk to me about this than to someone who is basically herself. I mean, I know she's uncomfortable with me too because we're committing incest, but I am still a version of her brother. That's got to count for something, provided that she hasn't completely grown apart from her own siblings – and unless something major changed there over the course of the past year, we know she hasn't."

"Well, it's worth a shot" Candace replied, even if she felt in her bones that it most likely wouldn't work out in the way her brother was hoping it would. "But I think that even if she hesitated now, Seven would probably talk her right back into hating us. I have no idea what her deal is, but I can tell that she can't stand you at all. She hasn't been as aggressive about it as Five has – aside from a few exceptions – but especially since Five was the one who started their witch-hunt against us in the first place, I have a feeling that Seven would push her back pretty quickly and remind her of her priorities if she started to dither."

"Yeah, that's a fair point" Phineas agreed. "Do you think that might be what caused her current attitude? That she bumped into Seven, someone who also didn't agree with our relationship, and it caused them to bond over it and through talking about it they reaffirmed their anger?"

Candace blinked. "You know, that's definitely possible" she said. "Having someone else who also hated me at her side definitely wouldn't have helped her get over her grudges, that's for sure."

"I doubt Candace Five hates you, sis" Phineas said softly, running his hand along her back. "And Seven probably doesn't either, deep down. They're just… upset. And it's probably for understandable reasons, too, but we have to find them and analyze them and explain that they are getting this all wrong. Candace Five must have been very confused when she first landed in that non-dimensional place, and to focus her mind she would have concentrated on something she already didn't like – your relationship with me. Add some incidents and misunderstandings to that, and it's not strange that she's back to where she started. And you know our relationship is a difficult thing to get used to – so many people we know and love have had difficulty with it. The fact that Five also does doesn't mean she's evil or anything like that. You saw the way she spoke to me when she got into the house, didn't you? She wasn't entirely comfortable, sure, but she didn't yell at me like Seven did. And as for Seven, even though she did yell some pretty nasty things at me, it's not like we've never had our arguments. They might not have gotten quite as bad, but they were there, you know."

Candace smiled, touched as always by her brother's infinite faith in people. It was one of the character traits that could be extremely aggravating from time to time, but which nevertheless warmed her heart and which she'd come to admire a great deal. And even if she didn't believe he was right in this regard, she also knew that if there was anyone who could quell all of the rows that had already erupted – or were likely to erupt – in this household now that her counterparts were staying over, it was her brother.

Still, she had to correct him when he was pretty clearly in the wrong. "Maybe Five didn't yell at you" she agreed. "But she still can't stand you, or me, and she won't shut up to me about how much she hates our relationship. And as long as she and Seven rile each other up against us, I doubt that either of them is going to back down no matter what you say to them. And, well, you've got to help them – all of them – get home, too. I know you love me and that's part of why you care so much about my counterparts and you want to help them get along, and of course I appreciate that. But you can't postpone their return journey just to take a crack at solving some of the issues between me and my counterparts. And honestly, if the way they acted thus far is anything to go by, I think Five and Seven will be even more angry with you if you stopped working at getting them home in order to make an attempt to get them to get along with me. Or they'd pretend to get along with us, only to go back on it as soon as you'd have finished working on whatever you need to do to bring them home again."

"I guess that is true" Phineas admitted. "Maybe I should focus on achieving dimensional travel first, then, and take time to worry about your counterparts afterwards. Even if they are angry with you, it is all only going to be for a couple of days, and they're unlikely to resort to outright sabotage since they want to get home. So in that regard at least, we should be fine."

Candace blinked. "A couple of days?" She felt surprised, even though her surprise wasn't really because she hadn't been expecting that – she had known on some level that they wouldn't be home within the next twenty-four hours ever since they got here. (If there had been a chance for that, she doubted that her counterparts would have been willing to settle in for the night like they had.) But to hear it confirmed that in spite of Ferb being present this time, in spite of this not involving complicated brainwave technology, in spite of them travelling through dimensions rather easily over twenty years ago, in spite of Phineas having had a full year of experience with (theoretical) dimension travel by now, they were stillgoing to be stuck having all these inter-dimensional guests over at Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated for days… well, it somehow made the whole experience feel very different.

"Well, yes" Phineas replied. "At least. From what you told me, I deduced that space-time across dimensions has likely been damaged to a great extent, given the rifts that have been created not just from our dimension, but also from One's and Two's and Three's and Five's and so forth. And that's just the rifts that we know about – who knows who or what else might have been sucked through time and space? It's an entirely precarious situation, and I don't want to tear open another rift to get your other selves home before I've had the chance to research this in detail."

Candace shuddered, remembering what had happened the last time Phineas hadn't researched something involving inter-dimensional travel in detail. "Yeah, that's fair enough" she agreed. "But what about that time we went to the other dimension and we had to escape by travelling the long way around? We opened a lot of rifts that time."

"True, but this time around we'd have to open rifts into dimensions which rifts have already been opened into" Phineas reminded her. "Not to mention that we were being chased by those robots at the time – we didn't really have a choice to do anything besides running for our lives. We do now, and as long as we have a choice I don't want to risk tearing up the space-time continuum more than necessary."

"I guess that's sensible" Candace replied, sighing. A distressing thought suddenly popped into her head. "Do you even think it'll work? You're going to have to open portals into all sorts of dimensions, dimensions we've never been to before and which we know nothing about. And this time, you don't have my brainwaves to latch onto. You're basically going out there blind – and the other me's are going to have to make a physical journey, rather than a mental one."

"Yeah, it's probably going to be difficult" Phineas admitted. "I'm not going to lie to you about that – it's entirely possible that when I manage to open a portal, I'm still not going to be able to bring the other you's – or even just one of them – home right away, and I'd have to recalibrate the settings of the portal in the other dimension in order for her to be able to travel to her home dimension. I suppose that would mean that Ferb and I would have to come along, to help work things out? Well, we'll cross that bridge in the morning, I suppose. But yes, even aside from that, I don't doubt that we're going to run into all kinds of complications that I can't even think of now. Complications that might make this whole thing more difficult, more time-consuming and more dangerous than we could conceive it to be."

He glanced over at her as she pondered those words, and then he rolled over towards her, tightened his grip on her and smiled. "But even if that happens, Candace… even if all of that happens… we're going to get through this. The way we've gotten through everything else that has happened so far. Ferb and I have conquered the impossible so many times before, and you became Queen of Mars, Candace. There's nothing we can't accomplish."

His sister smiled despite herself. "You know that that wasn't as much of a feat as it seems on the surface."

"The surface of Mars?" her brother replied teasingly.

Not for the first time, Candace wasn't sure whether to cringe or to grin, so she did both. "You know what I meant, Phineas."

Phineas nodded. "I do, yes. But regardless of that, you're still the only one in our family who ever ruled a planet in our solar system. That's good enough for me. We're going to pull this off, one way or another."

There was something ironic about Phineas' words, namely that the fact that he was reminding her that everything was going to be fine in the end left Candace yearning for that end even more than she already did. Because even though she knew Five and Seven would do everything to unsettle her, she was happy with her brother and with their kids. And sooner or later, she'd be alone with them again, without any other Candaces around, just like she had been on that island last summer. It was the way her life should be.

But she still couldn't be sure it would be exactly the same after they were all gone, could she?

Candace took a deep breath, trying to breathe calmly and ignore that thought fluttering into her brain – but she couldn't. Because right now, Candace Three was sleeping in the bedroom next to hers. And sometime tomorrow, she was going to step up and offer to help Phineas out, and he would discover the fact that there was a better Candace out there. And even if Phineas being Phineas meant that he'd likely take in stride the fact that she'd tried to keep him from finding out, and that she'd virtually sabotaged their return to this dimension, he would be intrigued by her. There could be no doubt about that. It simply wouldn't be in his character to not be intrigued.

It suddenly occurred to her that her brother was still holding her and might well have noticed the fact that she'd just randomly tensed up (even Phineas wasn't as oblivious anymore as he'd once been). But as she glanced down, she realized that she didn't have to worry about that. Phineas' head was buried against her shoulder, covered by some locks of her hair, and his facial expression and quiet breath indicated that he was fast asleep.

He looked so… peaceful there. (Well, she couldn't tell for sure because it was fairly dark, but from what little she could see he was at peace, and she knew her brother well enough to be able to be able to predict that he looked peaceful pretty much all the time.) For a moment, it made her envy him. Why was it always so much harder for her to relax than it was for him? To let go of those worries and insecurities? Phineas barely even had insecurities to speak of. She supposed that there were one or two, probably involving losing her or the kids or Ferb, but those were so deeply buried that they rarely came to the surface.

She didn't resent him, the way she resented Three (and hated it) and the way Five probably resented her for the fact that she was actually happy in life. Phineas didn't deserve to be resented. He was the way he was and she'd long come to realize just how incredibly grateful she should be for that.

Instead of resenting him, Candace tried to emulate him. She'd tried that over the years with varying degrees of success, but this seemed like a good moment to give it another shot. Because justified or not, (and as so often with her insecurities, Candace was pretty sure the answer to that was 'not') that discomfort she felt around Candace Three and her inventing capacities wasn't going to help her one bit. Not now, while she was trying to fall asleep, and not in the days to come. And especially if it was going to be a matter of days before everyone got home, Candace knew she'd have to go to great lengths to stay at peace with everyone.

So she closed her eyes, and let the exhaustion she'd accumulated over the course of the past day work for her. She calmed down. She relaxed, and as she drifted off into a dreamless sleep, Candace could imagine that this time she had actually managed to follow Phineas' example, and that she had thus truly become at peace with all the things that still bothered her.

But like so many things that Candace Flynn imagined to be true, that thought was just another illusion.


	9. The Potential For Required Adjustments

It was with not a little relief that Candace finally retired to the bedroom she'd 'volunteered' to take. If no one else wanted it because of what may or may not be going on on the other side of the wall, well, you could bet she was going to jump at the chance. It was rather cluttered in here - but in a good way, that sort of reminded her of home.

Tomorrow she'd definitely want to shower and change the sheets on this bed - the bed being covered with dust and herself with that gray sandy residue that clung to everything in unreality. It was mostly penta-atomic carbonized dust, she knew from experience. Annoying to get off of things, but not harmful - and certainly not enough to prevent her from getting a good night's sleep.

She collapsed into the bed, not even bothering to undo the sheets or the blanket, and was asleep almost before she landed, sleeping the deep sleep that can only be brought on by exhaustion.

Force of long habit propelled her out of the depths of sleep at precisely six o'clock in the morning, before her alarm even went off.

"Ugh," she mumbled, rubbing her head. "What a rough night. I've got to cut down on exposure to aviation gasoline before bed." Her eyes were still bleary with sleep, but it was time to be up and at them. She had to stuff to do today - plus, it was the first day of the new school year.

Vaguely sensing that there was no movement on the bed next to her, she pulled herself up and out before she accidentally woke Phineas. It was rare that she was up before him, but whatever.

Stepping around the stuff scattered about on the bedroom floor - was it just her or did the room seem smaller? - she stumbled out the door and down the stairs. Somebody'd been messing with a Spacial Limitation Recalibrator, she faintly realized. The hallway seemed much longer than she remembered. She'd have to say something about this to Amanda and Xavier, after all, they'd specifically forbidden the warping of the physical essence of reality inside the house. That kind of stuff was supposed to be restricted to outside only.

Somewhere in the back of her head, she felt something weird going on, but it was hardly enough to overpower the drowsiness that ruled over the vast majority of her being. She just needed to get a good breakfast in her and she'd feel better.

"Make me a bowl of cereal," she slurred in the general direction of where the automatic food-dispensary machine would be.

Now it was time for the daily game of 'where was the silverware this time?'

She yawned long and loud, reaching out and opening the nearest drawer. The handles had been changed - now why was that? Oh, well, she hardly cared. Oh, look - she'd gotten lucky. Studying the contents of the drawer, she reached in a pulled out a scoop big enough to-

Wait a second…

She did a double take and blinked several times, trying to refocus on the piece of metal in her hand. This wasn't any scoop. It was a - a, uh, pawn - soon - spade - oh, what was the word?

" SPOON !" she loudly exclaimed, startling even herself.

What the… where on earth had this thing come from? Where were the scoops? Where was…

Hang on a second - where was the automatic food-dispensary anyway? And the… other stuff - the electron conduit tubing, the microcosmic shifters, the zeta radiation foil - that was always piled up in her…

This wasn't her kitchen?

Suddenly, the memories of the day prior came crashing back to her like a tidal wave. She leaned out the kitchen doorway, and saw, sure enough, a living room that was far too neat and tidy to ever have been hers - not to mention the duplicates of her sleeping hard on the couches. How had she walked right past them?

Maybe she was more tired than she'd thought.

She looked down at the scoop spoon in her hand, suddenly feeling awkward at being all alone in a house that she'd never been in before. And also trying to dredge up from her long-term memory exactly how you were supposed to hold a spoon. Oh, duh - sort of like a fork, right? Well, this would be... weird. She hadn't seen or held a spoon, or even heard the word, for nearly two decades now. It was kind of funny, really. Also a constant reminder that you shouldn't mess with space-time unless you knew absolutely sure what you were doing - and also had a very good reason for doing so.

But that was beside the point. The point was that she was hungry - and in someone else's house that she hardly knew well enough to be comfortable poking around for food.

So… what was she supposed to do, exactly? Go back into the bedroom where she'd slept and wait around for everyone to get up? No, that was stupid - it was just about six o'clock already and the others would-

"What are you doing?"

The sudden sharp voice made her start, almost dropping the spoon. "Two!" she exclaimed, narrowly missing impaling herself on the end of that stupid stick that never left Two's side. "You can't keep doing that to people."

Two shrugged, but her tone was deadly serious. "You could've been an intruder - a NORMbot, or some other agent of Doofenshmirtz's."

"Right," Candace Three replied, growing increasingly exasperated at her other self's paranoia. "And what exactly would you have done had I been some raging robot ready to pounce on you?"

"I would've killed you." Two didn't hesitate - not even for a second. "I can't take any chances that might affect my way home."

Candace swallowed, suddenly little nervous despite herself. She wondered if Two had the same effect on everybody she met. It… wasn't a great way to make friends, that was for sure. Though somehow she felt that Two didn't really care too much about that either. "That's… great." As a way to change the subject, she held out the spoon. "Look!"

"What?" Two lowered her stick slightly, but did not seemed amused. "I don't have time for this. It's been almost twenty-four hours since Doofenshmirtz sent us to… the non-dimension. He's surely found out that we've escaped by now - and he'll be after us for sure." She turned sharply and walked out the kitchen, leaving Candace Three alone again.

"Rude," Three mumbled under her breath, turning back into the kitchen.

So what about that breakfast, then? She supposed she could go without it for a little while, at least. Even given the fact that this house did belong to Candace Four, she hardly felt like she should go digging around in it. Apparently Two did not share those same concerns, however, or if she did, she certainly wasn't letting them stop her.

Still, even though she couldn't dig around for stuff, it couldn't hurt to, like, walk through the house and see what the other rooms were like? Yeah, it might be a bit nosy, but could you really blame her? She was in a house that belonged a version of herself in an entirely different plane of existence… no, no you couldn't blame her. It was for science, anyway. She wanted to, you know, observe things.

Putting the spoon back into the drawer full of silverware - she'd have to remember which drawer it was so that she could get a headstart on any future games of 'where did the silverware go' - she returned to the living room.

She was definitely thankful that it was carpeted in here. Two of her other selves were sleeping soundly on the couches, though Candace couldn't tell which ones they were at a glance. Wait - one of the sleeping Candaces flashed and flickered in and out of existence a few times. So that was apparently Seven. Fair enough - and probably worth keeping in mind, so that she could… avoid Seven.

So what exactly should she do, then? Go back to the room that had been lent her to sleep in and wait for someone else - preferably Candace Four or Phineas, well, the Phineas from this dimension - woke up? That hardly seemed like a good idea.

Nevertheless, she padded through the living room and hall, eventually coming again to the base of the stairs again. There, however, she hesitated. There was another set of stairs heading downwards, practically right next to the flight going up. She hadn't noticed them last night at all.

Unless, of course, they simply hadn't been there last night, which was also theoretically possible, given who lived here. Still, her curiosity was piqued, and she glanced back and forth through the hallway before eventually deciding to descend the stairs and see what was down there.

Obviously she wasn't going to snoop - if there should be a closed door at their base, she did fully intend to leave well enough alone and not mess with it. But if there was no door or anything of that sort, then there was obviously nothing down that was supposed to kept private.

Well, that was how she was going to think of it, for now at least.

She descended the stairs, following the wall closely in the dim light of the early morning. Rounding the corner, she saw faintly that there was indeed a door - although it was hanging open. Well, she'd come this far.

Stepping into the room, she waited for a moment for the lights to come on - but they didn't. Well, okay, fair enough - apparently Candace Four's house was still running on manual switches. That was fair enough, although quantum depression detectors were way more convenient.

Running her hand over the parts of the wall nearest the door, she was unable to find any sign of a light switch, however, even when she traveled to the very far end of the room, a place where no sane person would ever put a light switch.

"Oh, come on," she muttered. "How am I supposed to get these lights to turn on without-"

A sudden popping noise could be heard, followed by a protracted humming as an old fluorescent light bulb mounted on the ceiling began to unsteadily glow. It cast long, dark shadows around the basement room, shadows which gradually faded as the light grew stronger.

"Whoa," Candace said to herself, looking around at the room. "It's some kind of… it's like a workshop of some kind. Cool."

Maybe this was how Candace Four managed to keep the house so clean elsewhere - by throwing all their junk into here. It rather looked it, given the general state of the room. Candace had once entertained an idea rather like that for her own house, but it'd kind of fallen apart after she realized that she'd couldn't find anything in the huge of pile of random crap that had rapidly accumulated. And it was just annoying, anyway - you'd be in the middle of something, and then realize you needed more of this, or that, only for it to be all the way downstairs in the garage or something. It was better to to just carry everything with you and leave it there when you finished.

This was the reason that there were so many shelves at home. So many, in every room, always with random stuff piled on them. (Except Xavier's - he hadn't wanted them for some reason.) But it worked - she always knew where everything was, roughly speaking. Like the extra tungsten dowels, which she was pretty sure were on the sixth shelf to the left of the living room over the television set.

Shaking those thoughts out of her head, she stepped farther into the room, past a cardboard box, over to the workbench pushed up against the far wall. Blowing and rubbing away the thick layer of dust that had accumulated over it, she picked up a blowtorch lying discarded to one side.

Shaking the collected filth from it, she gingerly turned the knob. A weak hissing emanated from the nozzle, followed immediately by a three-foot flame lunging out with surprising ferocity.

"Guess this still works," she mumbled to herself, quickly shutting it off and setting it back down. "Hmm."

She ran her over the rest of the stuff scattered over the surface of the desk. A stack of blank paper, a cup filled with all different writing utensils and a single random screwdriver, that blowtorch, another small-ish cardboard box that was still taped shut and a single blueprint that was somewhat crumpled up, as if someone had tried unsuccessfully to flatten it out after it'd been crushing into a ball.

Shoving all of that out of the way, she sat down and plucked a pencil out of the cup. Pulling the top few pieces of paper off the stack, she paused for a moment. What exactly was she trying to do here?

Well, that should have been obvious. Get home.

She tapped the pen against her chin, deep in thought for a moment. Well, okay, part of the job would be easy: the ripping of space and time. What they needed to do was rip space and time to a particular point, so that she - and all the other Candaces - could go home.

That would be easy - she'd done it before, as just a teenager.

The kicker, though, was that it would be rather preferable if they could manage all that without tearing this dimension so badly that it collapsed inwards and destroyed itself. Which, with seven Candaces to send home, was a distinct possibility. Space and time aren't designed to be torn like that, after all, and if you tore it too much, or too quickly, without giving it time to heal, then some really nasty stuff could happen.

Still, that could be avoided, as usual, with the help of some pizzazium infinionite. They needed to measure the current flux wavelength of the dimension and see how agitated the flux state was. Hopefully not too much, otherwise they'd have to choose between sitting here and waiting out the flux, or trying to risk braving an unstable flux current, again, while tearing into seven separate dimensions.

The Theory of Everything talked about this, of course, since it talked about everything - hence the name.

She looked back down at the paper and began to write.

Current flux wavelength 2 into the third radical of the coefficient of the rate of dimensional energy flow(rate dfr ) = variable flux waves per dimensional attosecond (wpdA)

Take the square of wpdA to the power of the integral of 1 plus the square root of 2 to the power of the limit of sin (2wpdA) over 2 as energy approaches infinity where the integral is from 1 to 3 all times the derivative of the integral of time dx from x to 1

Take the fourth root of infinity and divide into the cube root of -

"The fourth root of infinity?" Phineas asked from behind her. "Doesn't seem like that takes into account dimensional warping due to excessively many extra-dimensional objects."

"True," Candace mumbled, marking that part out. "Also need to consider the possibility of lingering micro-rifts disrupting our efforts by draining away ionic charge into extra-dimensional flux space." She paused. "Guess the best bet would be the fourth-third root of infinity, especially given-"

"-the fact that temporary time dilation from the rifting is likely going to distort flux readings to some degree?"

Candace nodded. "Yeah. Also that - waaaait, hang on a second." She half-turned in the chair, which squeaked violently and coughed up a cloud of dust particles as she did so. She wasn't at home - she was in another dimension, another house. Candace Four's home. Therefore, it followed logically that this wasn't Phineas either. Well, he was - in a way. Just not the Phineas that she was used to.

"Good morning," the other-Phineas said, half-waving. "You're Candace number... Three, right?"

"Yes," Candace Three assented. "Wait - how'd you know?"

Other Phineas pointed behind himself back up the stairs. "You left the door open when you left your room. I happened to glance in and saw you weren't in there. Other than that, lucky guess."

"Is... anyone else awake yet?" Candace asked, feeling herself grow oddly awkward at being alone with him.

"Uh," Other Phineas looked thoughtful. "Candace is up, of course - I think you called her 'Four'? - and Two is poking around in the yard. Not quite sure what she's doing out there, but more power to her, I guess. Seven and, uh, Kevin are still asleep and the other bedroom doors are still shut so I can't say as to them."

"Fair enough," Candace returned slowly. This was really sort of weird. Other-Phineas was… so much like Phineas. At the same time, though, he was nothing like him. It was deep in the uncanny valley - and made her distinctly miss home - where her Phineas was waiting for her. Phineas who looked at her with more than just kindness and civility in his eyes, Phineas who she loved and who loved her back.

Other Phineas was none of these things.

He was also incredibly tall, Candace realized. Like, still several inches shorter than she was (but most people were, being 6'4'' it just came with the territory - aside from Two, who was seriously tall and easily towered over the rest of them) but it was only several inches, and just that.

Other Phineas could probably touch the top of her head if he reached up, something her own brother would never have been able to do. Heck, he could just about see into her eyes without having to crane his neck, which was not something Candace was used to - not when she'd been living for the past decade with her own brother, the tips of whose hair only just managed to brush her shoulder height.

There would be no room to tease this Phineas about being 'short stuff' - not that she would have anyway, of course, given that for all intents and purposes, he was practically a stranger.

No wonder Four was shorter than Three was - all her height had been somehow stolen by Other Phineas. Apparently Four's dimension was a strange one in… multiple ways.

These thoughts of dimensions (and their inherent variations from each other) made a flash of worry dart through her. They were back in reality now. How long would it be before the temporal memory disassociation wore away enough for Phineas to realize that she was gone? What would happen then? Would he know where to find her? She swallowed nervously, her imagination conjuring up all sorts of horrific possibilities that could even now be playing out.

She knew it would be a little while before something happened to fully restore Phineas' and Xavier's and Amanda's temporally disassociated memories without her physical presence there. But soon enough something would happen, and it would 'click', so to speak, and they'd realize that she was actually absent - and had been, ever since yesterday when she'd entirely ceased to exist.

"Worried about something?" Other Phineas' all-to-familiar voice broke into her thoughts. Maybe if she just closed her eyes and - no, that was just desperate and sad. It hadn't even been that long, for goodness' sake. How messed up was she? Shaking her head, she shrugged. "A little. But I'm - we're gonna be able to fix it in time, if we work hard - and fast." She picked up the paper she'd been writing on. "I am glad you're here, though - I'm of the opinion that if we construct a device to store an electric charge, consisting of one or more pairs of conductors separated by an insulator, but tuned to pick up on quantum flux waves, we may be able to tear open space-time enough to test the energy flow between dimensions. We can pick up on trace delta radiation to determine which way-" She abruptly stopped, as a curious look came over Other Phineas' face. "What?"

"I mean," he said. "You're not wrong, it's just… advanced spatio-temporal quantum physics? I must admit, I'm a little surprised."

"Surprised?" Candace Three echoed. "It's nothing that complex compared to the other stuff we do - why would you…" her speech trailed away. "Oh, I, uh, forgot about that."

Other Phineas raised one eyebrow. "Forgot about what?"

Candace was somewhat surprised that Four hadn't thought to mention this to Other Phineas at some point, but it had been late last night. Because, apparently, that odd phase she'd gotten stuck in in her childhood that had left her in brothers' shadows for so long - was how Four had lived her whole life. Candace wasn't quite sure how that worked, really, but apparently that was how it was. So, naturally, it's also what Other Phineas would expect.

"So, like," she began, "You know aaaall that stuff you do, like, the teleporters, the roller coasters, the time machine, the general flaunting of the laws of science and nature at their most basic and irrefutable level?" Other Phineas did do that kind of stuff, right? She… she would have assumed so, but then again, if Four couldn't , who knew what all could be different, exactly?

"Yes?"

Candace Three nodded, smiling. "Nice. Well, I can do it too."

Other Phineas blinked. "Really? That's…" he smiled, in a way that was both gratifying and homesickness-inducing at the same time. "...so cool. Wait." He held up a hand. "Do you mind?"

Candace shook her head. "Shoot."

"Can you tell me i to the power of the fraction of 2 to the power of 6 over 16 all times the integral of 1 plus the square root of 2 to the power of the limit of sin (2r) over 2 as r approaches infinity where the integral is from 1 to 3 all times the derivative of the integral of t dx from x to 1?"

"Ten," she replied, smiling despite herself. "Don't go so easy on me next time."

"That's really cool," he repeated. "How'd it even work anyhow? Is your dimension like ours, but reversed, or something? So, can Ferb and I not do this?"

"No, you two can certainly invent," she replied, internally chuckling at the ridiculousness of such an idea. "I think that's, like, a cross-dimensional constant or something - kinda like the Mysterious Force." She paused. "There was incident with a machine that twisted the space-time continuum into crazy time loops that sucked up stuff and… general unpleasantries."

"Time loops?" Other Phineas said thoughtfully. "I kinda remember Candace talking about those once, but I can't say I remember much of what she said. It was a long time ago, anyhow."

"Yeah, well, it was a horribly awful, completely terrifying time. I don't like to talk about it, for the most part, so I won't," Candace returned. "But it did help me get past the mental barrier that my jealousy and pettiness had used to prevent me from doing this sort of thing. So there was that." She shuddered slightly. "But again, I don't wanna talk about it."

Other Phineas held up his hands. "I won't ask, then." He cleared his throat in an almost awkward manner. "Besides, I assume you have the - the other me to talk to about that stuff."

Candace Three nodded. She could feel her face heating up as she did so, for no good reason at all. This was Other Phineas, after all. If anyone in the space-time continuum was going to support her in her relationship with her brother, aside from her own brother himself, then it would be Other Phineas. Still, it happened, and she was suddenly embarrassed. "Can - can we just talk about getting home?"

"Sure," Other Phineas agreed, smiling at her in a way that she recognized as him trying to be comforting. It failed miserably, though - the look in his eyes was different, as it would be, of course, but still. Well, at least it was motivation - motivation to get home as quickly as possible. "I'm going to call Ferb and we can head over to our real laboratory as soon as possible. Plus, it'll be way less cramped than our house when all of you guys are over there."

"Oh, yeah," Candace said. "I forgot that Four said you had an actual building somewhere. I guess it makes sense - this room as a laboratory kinda…"

"Yeah, I don't usually use it," Other Phineas replied. "It's in bad shape, I know."

There was a loud thump from upstairs, catching both their attentions at once.

"Well, we should probably go up and get something to eat," Other Phineas said again. "Ferb and I - and you? - have our work cut out for us today."

Candace Three was going to protest to that - she wanted to keep working on getting home, after all, but then she was suddenly reminded by her stomach that she too was hungry. And it would probably be better if she ate - both for her mood and for the quality of her work.

And given the general dispositions of Two… and Five… and Seven… she'd need as good a mood as she could muster.

"Alright," she relented, standing up from the chair. "I guess that's a good idea."

Other Phineas nodded slowly. "I… am sure you're missing home. I know that in your dimension you're also with, well, not me specifically , but 'me' as in the me from your dimension?"

"I…" Candace said uncertainly. There really was absolutely zero point in trying to hide it. Not only had Four told him last night with Three sitting right there, again, this was Phineas - the Phineas who had had children with Four. "Yes," she finally answered, wanting to kick herself for her stupidity - repeatedly.

Other Phineas seemed thoughtful for a moment. "Don't worry - we'll figure this out. You'll be home before you know it."

Candace Three rolled her eyes. "You're all alike, you know that?"

"Consider it part of the welcoming tour," Other Phineas smiled. "Come on - let's go get something to eat. I'll go get-"

"Phineas?"

Candace Three turned and looked at the base of the stairs back up. It was another Candace, of course, although she could easily tell by… everything exactly which one it was. Candace Four, of course. Other Phineas' reaction alone to her presence was enough to tip her off to that, although the way she'd greeted him was also plenty of evidence.

"I'm just… going to go back upstairs," Three quickly cut in. "It was… nice talking to you, O- Phineas."

"Likewise."

She nodded briefly to Four as she snatched up her scribbled-on paper and hastily beat a retreat up the stairs. She was hungry, and it was about time to eat.

Up the stairs, the once-quiet house had dissolved into that which one might well have described as a war zone.

Seven was sitting up on the couch, looking about as sour as always, hardly even acknowledging her as she walked past. Another Candace was sitting at the kitchen table eating a salad - because that was something you should eat for breakfast. She could hear the water running through the wall, although everything was still quiet farther down the hallway in the room marked as belonging to Four's kids'.

She poured herself a bowl of cereal, and, unable to find a place to sit at the kitchen table - after Candace Six informed her that Two had dragged away half the chairs so that she could use them to bar the doors against 'strike parties' - she hauled herself up and sat on the counter to eat.

"This is some... unique food for sure," Candace Six announced again. "But I suppose I'll try some."

"I hate this place, I hate it, I hate it," Candace Five muttered. "Why do I get to spend the start of my autumn like this? What did I do?"

Candace Seven barged into the kitchen for a second and took a box of something that was sitting on the table, before disappearing again - probably to mope about some more, because that was all Three had ever seen her doing since they'd gotten here.

"You know, Six, you really should probably get a change of clothes somewhere," Candace Three suddenly commented, on a whim. "How you're dressed now… might attract some unwanted attention."

Six frowned. "I suppose, if everyone here wears such odd things as you."

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do," someone commented. "It's one of the first things I learned as a politician." Ah, so it was Kevin. Three'd have to ask her about her questionable eating habits sometime soon.

"Wait, where is Rome?" Six echoed. "Is that the name of this planet?"

"You should meet Meap," Three added. "I bet you and him would get along fabulously. You've both got the whole space thing going on."

Candace wondered for a moment if there even was a counterpart of Meap in this dimension. And Mitch, too. Whew, it'd certainly be bad luck if heshould decide to show up again right about now if so. Mitch had never quite forgiven Candace or her brothers or their friends for his first defeat and subsequent capture, and occasionally made token attempts to destroy, like, the solar system or something to see if he could eke out some sort of revenge. It was less of a threat and more of an annoyance by this point - just something they could look forwards(?) to every year, when he'd show up, just like clockwork.

Isabella Garcia-Shapiro hated it the most, of course, because every time it happened, she was the only one who could ever actually look at the guy or whatever he'd done this time, thanks to her ridiculously high natural cuteness, so she'd get dragged into it every time, because, hey, the fate of the solar system was hanging in the balance!

Sometimes Candace really wished that the Meapian society would develop a more severe punishment than fifteen minutes of sitting in a chair thinking about what you did. But the Meapian High Council was immovable, even after Ferb himself had tried to debate it with them.

Ah, well.

She sat the paper down on the counter next to her and continued scrawling out plans for a prototype of a machine that might work to safely deliver them home. She almost tried to call the Super Duper Mega Superstore - well, she did try, actually, but the fact that her phone had been torn apart and reassembled into a space-time aberration detector pretty much stopped that. As well as did the realization that she was still in that pesky 'alternate plane of existence'. Which would also proved an obstacle to calling anyone.

She briefly entertained the idea of building a generator for a very tiny rift, only big enough to let cell signals through, and trying to communicate with other dimensions in that way, before rejecting it as being an absolute waste of time. Maybe once she got home, something like that could be used to call back here. That might be nifty.

Just as she finished her cereal and had set the dishes in the middle of the table for the auto-dish-washer to take care of (wait, was that even a thing in this house? She really needed to get on top of that.), Other Phineas walked into the kitchen.

"Alright, everybody," he said, "Well, everybody's who in here right now, at least." He paused. "After we're all doing eating, we can head off to Flynn-Fletcher Inc. It's gonna be the place where we really get to work on getting you all home."

Now there, as far as Candace was concerned, was a plan.


	10. Infighting in the Party

**A/N:** _So greatly sorry about the massive delay here... we're going to try to remain more accurately on top of this from now on, I daresay. Please bear with us, really - and enjoy the story!_

* * *

Kevin Clarke (née Flynn) was doing very well and had everything under her control.

That was what she'd say if asked, as it was her standard politician's answer. (In fact, she knew she would have a hard time saying anything else by now unless she felt particularly strongly one way or another.) But in this case, it was true. Because all things considered, Kevin was actually feeling fairly content with her situation. She had been forced to sleep on the couch, yes, but it had been a fairly comfortable couch, and the blanket had been warm. Candace Seven – that was the name of the one who had been with her, the disgruntled one – might have complained a lot before, but she'd slept well throughout the night and hadn't bothered Kevin one bit.

Of course there were reasons for which she would want to be home again. Take the pool legislation, for instance, on which the final debate was going to take place in a couple of days' time. If she wasn't there she knew the opposition would use her absence to try to postpone the pool's expansion again. And she just knew Hirano would be behind it, despite the fact that Kevin had beaten her fair and square only a couple of months ago. And then there were various other minor issues on the agenda, some about money she wanted spent but which the opposition thought was a complete waste, and some about areas she wanted to cut back on but which the opposition proclaimed to be 'essential services'. She'd never catch a break, but that was okay, because she was doing this for Danville.

That meant her Danville, of course.

Because the Danville she'd slept in this night was a very different Danville from the one she was familiar with. Kevin already knew that, of course, from the way the Candaces (and although by now she'd caught on to the fact that male and female names appeared to be reversed here it was still difficult to remember because it was so weird and wrong) had all but assaulted her because one random zebra had been bothering them. Why couldn't they understand that she had nothing to do with what the zebra did? She didn't control her voters. These Candaces apparently had a very strange idea of how democracy worked.

All those thoughts and more were on her mind when she woke up that morning. It was fairly quiet in the house, but she could hear the birds chirping outside and as she pulled open the curtains, she could see that it was morning. Trying not to disturb Seven, she walked over to the kitchen. She wasn't sure whether anyone else was up yet, but she might as well wash her face using the sink – there could be better opportunities later, without disturbing people either because they were up and wanted to use the shower, or because they weren't and didn't want to hear her using it. Hmm, it might be useful to check how thick the walls were in this house.

After using a washcloth to spread the water over her face (she couldn't use any make-up, of course, but given the plain and simple image she was trying to cultivate that was a bonus in a way) Kevin headed to the refrigerator. It was fairly hard to find the salads she wanted amidst an array of fairly unfamiliar looking products – maybe Phineas and Candace from this dimension didn't store their breakfast products in the refrigerator – and when she found a salad and sat down at the kitchen table to eat it, it tasted funny. Apparently it contained something called 'cheese'. She'd never heard of that before.

While Kevin ate, the house came to life outside her, and although she didn't join in on conversation (aside from once giving Six useful advice on how to deal with her completely new environment) she kept her ears wide open. From the things Seven and Five were saying, they were still equally disgruntled about the whole incest situation. They dealt with it in different ways, though – although they'd both risen early, which they themselves ascribed to how disturbed they felt about all this, Five had taken the advantage to get a breakfast of… was that cereal? Who ate that stuff for breakfast? And what was that white goop it was in anyway - it looked almost like some kind of bodily fluid. Pus, or milk, or something thereabout. Certainly not appetizing, at the very least. Whereas Seven remained on the couch, looking utterly uninterested in and vengeful against anything that was happening around her. Interesting.

Kevin still wasn't sure how she herself felt about the whole incest thing. On the one hand, the idea of doing something like that with either Petra or Fern freaked her out. They were her little brothers, after all, and she'd already been in love with Wilma when they were still little kids.

But the way these two Candaces were approaching it was just completely counterproductive. Didn't they see that proudly proclaiming how much they hated the relationship of the local Kevin and Petra was only going to bring them closer to each other, if it had any effect at all? Certainly, as a politician she understood the strength of moral values, and she could relate to their desire to unsee all this. But even so, any attempt to end this relationship – and given that it had produced two teenaged kids, Seven and Five were running a little late for that – should be attempted through an approach of 'we understand you feel love for each other, but it is wrong to act upon those feelings for this and this reason, so for your own sake it would be best to terminate the relationship' rather than 'we see you're in love and we can't stand you for it'. Even Stanley Hirano didn't openly flout attitudes like that.

But where Five and Seven might be difficult company with incredibly one-track minds (a personality flaw which her personal advisers had always warned her about, and that warning was really being vindicated here) Two was probably worse. Kevin had not disliked the uncomfortably tall woman with the sunglasses when she first met her back in the… was that the non-dimension? (She supposed it was. No one had really bothered to explain it to her.) But she'd soon realized that Two had a very difficult, bossy and driven character. She was a lot like a military veteran. Good in emergency situations like the one in the other dimension (although even there her assessment of Three's skills had been proven wrong) but totally unsuited to civilian life.

Three came to the living room almost near the end, followed only by Four. Provided that her memory was correct, that only left One (the teenager) unaccounted for. Maybe she was sleeping in. Kevin watched Three closely, as she was continuously writing down something on a piece of paper. Given the fact that Three had been the one to help them out of the non-dimension her writings were likely to be calculations of some sorts, but they might be something else that was far more personal. Maybe she was writing a letter to her Pet-Phineas, which she could somehow send to him by inter-dimensional post.

Another remarkable thing about Three was the way she went from behaving as if she had lived here for years to looking around insecurely within seconds, only to return to the start of the cycle. Well, Three would be from a similar household, wouldn't she? Kevin supposed that this might mean the houses themselves were similar as well. That made sense – Three feeling as if she was really at home could explain her relaxed start, with her tensing up as she realized that she wasn't. Kevin couldn't quite explain the extent of Three's insecurity, though. She would have to study her further in order to be able to come to reliable conclusions about that.

It had been a couple of hours since the start of the morning before Phineas came into the room. She'd seen him around last night, but only briefly, and he acted courteous but distant. It was interesting to see him. He wasn't quite like Petra, but despite the girly name he still had a lot of Petra's mannerisms and looks. Although Five and Seven looked at him with some wary frowns, his basic message – that it was just about time to go to what Kevin presumed to be his office building – was very well received.

Seven, of course, was eager to get out of there right away, whereas Five looked like she was in that phase where you really hate the status quo you're having to put up with, but you fear the alternative. Two muttered something about the dangers of going outside without a squad of friendly snipers to protect them, but in the end her desire to go home was clearly greater than her worries about the journey to this Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. (Maybe she could suggest that corporation name to Petra and Fern one day?) Three seemed downright eager to come along, and Kevin was just wondering whether they'd all fit in the car when Four spoke up and asked just that.

It turned out that that was indeed a bit of an issue. Apparently Phineas' car seated five people and Candace's car could fit only two, which meant that some of them would inevitably have to be left behind. Phineas informed them that he'd asked Fern Ferb whether he could drive them, but apparently his youngest daughter had a cold so it was taking him another hour or two, which left them with a dilemma which fortunately didn't last very long. Candace One was still asleep after all (which was really strange as it was already getting close to eleven in the morning, but Kevin figured the girl must have had a long day before coming here, or maybe she just didn't deal well with stress) so she'd have to stay behind in any case, and once that option was on the table more of them agreed to stay.

In the end, it was decided that Phineas, Two, Three, Five and Seven would go. Phineas for obvious reasons, Two because she insisted, Three because she wanted to help in getting them back home, and Five and Seven because they really couldn't stand being here for a minute longer. (Although it was interesting to see Seven remember that if she stayed here, she would probably end up spending more time away from Phineas in the end, and then seeing the woman be genuinely torn for a few moments until her desire to go home proved decisive.) Which just left Kevin here cooped up with Four, Six and little Candace One.

Where Six decided to spend her time exploring the house and the garden, and Four monitored them for a couple of minutes before heading upstairs to do whatever she did (judging from her mental state, it was likely that she was going to do some mundane everyday housework to take her mind off the more disturbing aspects of the things they had all lived through yesterday) Kevin chose to stay in the living room. She found a classic, old-fashioned puzzle book laying around and sat down at the kitchen table. It would be a good way to pass the time, and it was always nice to be able to keep her brains sharp.

She'd been chipping away at the puzzle for about ten minutes when Candace One finally entered the room. Although she'd clearly had a shower and tried to make herself look as presentable as possible, the wary expression in her eyes indicated a distrust of her surroundings, one that likely stemmed from a deep discomfort. The way she opened the fridge while avoiding the fridge magnet with the older kid's name on it and the snapshot of Phineas, Candace and Ferb together told Kevin that One still hadn't come to terms with the relationship of her counterpart either, and more so, that it might well have something to do with the kids – Xavier and Amanda. (Who were a boy and a girl respectively, not a girl and a boy. She would really have to watch out for slip-ups.) One had spent the night together with those two, and the fact that she'd overslept and yet still didn't look as relaxed as a well-rested person might, plus her discomforted attitude, provided enough clues to indicate that something had happened there.

"Good morning, Candace," she said, trying to strike the right tone between being too cheerful and too somber. She wanted to cheer the teenager up, but she knew that sounding over-enthusiastic would just earn her One's indifference. It was difficult, especially given the emphasis she always put on appearing especially positive in public, but she thought she'd managed it.

Candace One looked up at her for a moment, mumbled something, and then went back to rummaging through the fridge. That was… discouraging, but it wasn't a surprise. Kevin waited until One had sat down and then asked: "Did you sleep well?" Again, she tried to watch her tone carefully – not too light-hearted, in that she wasn't seeing One's obvious problems, or too pitying or confrontational. Just a casual but gentle and obviously well-meaning question.

Candace sighed. "I… did, actually" she replied. "Or at least, I did for the last couple of hours. Those… those kids… Amanda and Xavier… they didn't shut up about their parents. Of which one was me, and the other was my brother." Kevin decided not to question her about that unintentional rhyme. "And I had to sleep with someone who looks like Phineas, but who is apparently the kid of a version of me, and we were all in the same bed, and it was beyond creepy." She shook her head. "It took me hours and at least three Ducky Momo stories to fall asleep. This morning, I just tried to avoid conversation for as long as possible – which meant that I spent half an hour just lying on the bed waiting for the others to leave the room without having them notice that I was awake, you know? But of course they just had to play a video game. In the end, I just gave up and walked out. Xavier did try to talk to me again, but I shrugged him off – I'd be happy to never talk to either of them again." She shook her head. "And you're one of the me's that slept on the couch, aren't you? So you're probably going to tell me I was spoiled for being able to sleep on an actual bed which was my size, length-wise at least… but if you're going to listen to any word I say, then know that this whole place is a mess."

Kevin shrugged. "The couch was fine. But I do think you're focusing too much on the negative here. Yes, the thought of any version of me being in a romantic relationship with our brothers is weird to me as well. But you can't focus on that. If you do, you'll never be able to live a normal life again, or at least not until we return home. I know this sounds difficult, but you should accept it and try to move on. The… relationship between Four and her brother is a weird choice that a different version of us made. We don't have to understand it in order to tolerate it."

It was one of the golden rules of politics – of debating in general, really. Never get so caught up in what your opponent is doing wrong that you forget what you're doing right.

Candace snorted. "I want to tolerate it," she muttered. "Or at least, I would if they weren't confronting me with it at every breath they take. Because Xavier looks exactly like Phineas, and he's not supposed to look like Phineas because he should look like Jeremy, and I should be with Jeremy! Not with my brother, but with the love of my life! And Amanda… Amanda is worse. She never quits yammering on about how great her Dad is."

"Then tell them that," Kevin replied. "Tell them that it's making you uncomfortable to be reminded of Phineas and Candace's relationship, and that you want them to stop referring to it. Of course you can't stop Xavier from looking like her – I mean his father, but…"

"But that's the exact problem," Candace said. "They can't stop, because they've already gone too far down this road. Xavier won't stop looking like Xavier, and those kids won't stop talking about their 'Mom' and 'Dad', because to them this is apparently normal." She shook her head. "It was just that one joke at Isabella's expense – I never meant to hurt her with it! I never meant to give her ideas! Why did this have to happen to me!"

Kevin was placed in the weird position of having to comfort a person who was essentially herself, but younger. (Even if she didn't understand much of what Candace had just said.) One was hunched over at the table, still slowly sipping the cereal and the white goo it was in, and Kevin felt herself at a loss for words. It wasn't too often that something like that happened to her, but she supposed that what with her being transported into a whole other dimension, she did have some excuse. Maybe she should get Four to come and help and tell her about One's problems? Four should be able to understand One, as they seemed to be basically the same person at different ages after all, and after a good chat maybe Four would realize that she should stop reminding everyone of her desires towards her brother. Granted, in this case it had apparently been the children who couldn't stop talking about their family, but Four could definitely pass on the message.

She stood up and, after giving One a few awkward pats on the shoulder, she headed over to the living room door. She opened it, intending to go to the stairs and find her other self – the house couldn't be that big, she should be able to find her counterpart with ease – when something strange happened.

Something – or someone – scurried by her feet, and Kevin turned around to see who it was. It was a teal platypus, probably relatively old considering some of the wrinkles in his skin. The fact that he was here caught her off-guard, because neither Candace nor Phineas had mentioned that somebody was coming over. She hadn't even heard the doorbell ring. Maybe he was hiring one of her counterpart's rooms? (That would be strange, given his age – she wondered why he couldn't just go to a retirement home, but maybe he couldn't afford that.) Or maybe he was just a friend of the family who had slept over? Then again, that was something else that Phineas and Candace most likely would have mentioned.

But the fact that the platypus was here wasn't the strangest thing – it was his mannerisms. He scurried past her at a modest pace, treating her presence there with complete indifference. Really, was it so much trouble to say 'hi'? And then there was the fact that he was crawling over the ground. As in, literally crawling. Moving around on arms and legs. She'd never seen anyone do that outside of games or crawling through vents or stuff like that.

"Um, hello?" she said, trying to call the platypus' attention – Candace One apparently hadn't noticed him yet. "Excuse me, sir? I'm Kevin. It's nice to meet you."

That caught the platypus' attention, and he stopped to turn towards her. Kevin was instantly struck by his eyes, which stood apart in an incredibly unnatural way. She hadn't met too many platypuses – she thought only two or three had voted for her last summer – but she could tell that this wasn't what a normal platypus should look like. Maybe he was mentally disabled? Wait, was that still what she was supposed to call sentients like that these days? It was so hard to keep track of those things.

One looked up and gave the newcomer a look. "Oh there you are, Perry" she said, disgruntled. Her face then softened slightly. "Okay, you can come here."

Kevin wasn't sure what she meant with that, but whatever she had been expecting to happen next, it was not the platypus – Perry? – crawling over to Candace One and jumping into her lap. That was… an odd image. And here One was saying that Three and Four were disturbing? She supposed that if he was a friend of the family even in Candace's time – when the platypus would obviously have been a lot younger – it was all right. Probably.

It occurred to her that she could, you know, just ask. "You know him?" she asked, figuring that that wasn't the best statement per se, but given that the platypus wasn't replying (maybe he was mute) it was probably best to address One instead.

Candace One rolled her eyes. "Of course I do. He's our pet back home."

Kevin blinked, unsure what One was referring to. "Pet what?"

One frowned, clearly annoyed now but also confused by the fact that Kevin didn't understand what she was saying – they really seemed to have bumped into another one of those differences between dimensions here, apparently. "Our pet. As in, he's ours. Phineas and Ferb bought him from the pet store a long time ago."

It took a few moments before the implications of that statement sank in. "You… you enslaved a platypus?" she whispered, aghast. That… that couldn't be possible, could it? Aside from the fact that Perry (was that his real name?) was so willing to get close to Candace, there was also the more practical detail that even during the most cruel days of slavery, few people had enslaved platypuses because they weren't known for doing much and because they had venomous ankle barbs. But there was no other way to interpret teenaged Candace's words.

"What the – of course not!" Candace One exclaimed, pinning the poor, aged platypus helplessly in her arms. "I told you, he's our pet!"

Kevin had come across many disturbing things in her long political career, but seldom had she seen a fifteen-year-old girl defend her enslavement of an innocent platypus like this. Every sense of righteousness she had demanded that she acted with force, and thus she did. She had to save Perry, right now. She stepped forward and lunged for him, roughly grabbing One's arm and pinning her down to the ground. "Let him go, you…"

And then Candace One did let go – albeit inadvertently – and Perry the platypus abruptly snapped out of his mentally deficient state. The clear and focused expression on his face was the last thing she noticed before he punched her in the face and physically pushed her off Candace One. Kevin landed on the ground, suddenly feeling rather sore.

What was even happening here?

She had been trying to save that poor, mentally disabled platypus from a Candace who had turned out to be far more evil than her innocent, teenaged exterior had made her believe – and then that platypus himself had come to life and pushed her away. Perry was watching her now, his eyes firmly pinned on hers, as if warning her not to try anything. Didn't he understand that she was hardly the enemy? Kevin felt a wave of resentment against the platypus and the girl – who looked shocked, for some reason? That didn't make much sense. Sure, Kevin's accusations of slavery had thrown her off-guard, but Candace One was looking at Perry instead.

"All right, what's going on here?" Four asked, bursting into the room. "I could hear you from upstairs. I…" She frowned. "Okay, why are you two rolling over the floor?"

"She attacked me!" Candace One exclaimed, getting to her feet and quickly retreating to the very edge of the room. "Just for the fact that we have Perry in our world – and she said we were keeping him as a slave!"

"As a slave?" Four repeated. Her reaction suddenly made Kevin realize that in this dimension, Perry might well be in her custody instead – that would explain what he was doing around the house. "Why would you call… oh." She inappropriately let out a short chuckle and shook her head. "Kevin, didn't we make clear to you why we were so freaked out by that zebra from your dimension? Well, aside from the fact that he used your name and appeared out of nowhere?"

Now that was hardly a relevant topic, but for diplomacy's sake Kevin didn't object to it as she stood up. "No, you didn't" she replied, trying not to sound bitter. "Why?" She was outnumbered anyway – this subject clearly wasn't one that she could resolve with force after all.

"Because in our dimension, animals – zebras, dogs, cats, platypuses – aren't sentient, and they can't talk" Four explained, on a tone that sounded like she was talking down to her while doing her best not to talk down to her. "Yes, Perry is very much sentient, and he's a trained undercover secret agent. But that's only possible because no one else can see him for what he is. Over ninety percent of his kind consists out of dumb animals who could never participate in our society."

Kevin snorted, feeling increasingly aghast at Four's archaic language. "That sounds like a farfetched, unrealistic and discriminatory way to avoid my slavery charge."

"It's not!" Four exclaimed, shaking her head. "I mean, there's got to be some animals in your world that aren't sentient – what about birds? Or fish? Or insects? Do they participate fully in your societies in the same way that zebras and platypuses apparently do?"

"Of course not" Kevin snorted. "Why would you…" She blinked, connecting the dots. "Are you saying that… that's what it's like for all non-humans in your world? They can't talk? They… they're not considered sentient?"

Four sighed. "It's a complicated situation, but yes, that is what it comes down to. Dogs, cats, platypuses, zebras… none of them can talk, and all of them live out in the wild in the way I suppose fish do in your world. Unless they are taken in by people and raised as pets – which means that those people take care of them, and raise them with their family, just not as a member of their family. Again, it would be like taking in a fish in your world. Why do you think we were all so freaked out by the fact that the zebra from your dimension talked to us? Because he's a zebra, and zebras aren't supposed to talk. Not as far as we knew, at least."

Kevin sat down, staring at the ground. "I… this is so confusing" she replied. She knew she had to treat this rationally, and she was trying to, of course, but it was just such a hard concept to wrap her head around. She'd come across some people in her life who kept a fish and rather than eating it put it in a bowl, which she had always thought was a very odd thing to do. Apparently, though, it was normal here – since Four and Phineas were keeping a platypus around. A non-sentient platypus, even.

"But… Perry?" she protested. "He's not like a fish. Fishes wouldn't have been able to punch me like that! Fishes wouldn't stand on their feet like that!" Fishes also didn't generally live outside of the water, but that was besides the point.

"Perry is a unique case" Four replied. "Well, not technically unique, because he's not the only one… but for some reason, he and a lot of house pets around the Tri-State Area are practically sentient, almost on the level of humans. They are employed by an organization called the OWCA to fight evil scientists. Perry, for example, used to fight the Dr. Doofen-something that Two won't stop rambling about." She shook her head. "I don't really know why Perry is sentient and all those other platypuses aren't, whether it's the result of a lot of experiments or if it's a mutation, but it's a thing that is real here."

Kevin shook her head, still unable to wrap her head around this whole idea, and her silence gave Candace One the chance to speak up. "Perry is… really… a secret agent?" she whispered. "Like James Bond?"

Perry looked at her and pulled a hat out of… somewhere, which he put on his head and then tipped, making a weird bird-like gurgle with his voice rather than actually saying something in the Australian accent Kevin had been expecting. One's eyes widened further, whereas Four rolled hers. "Didn't we already tell you that back in the non-dimension?" she said.

"Yeah…" One muttered, unable to take her eyes off Perry. "Yeah, but I thought you were just joking then!" Her face soured. "Of course, given the fact that I thought the same thing about your whole i-i-incest thing, I should have known."

Four smirked, sitting down opposite Kevin. "That's part of how we keep it a secret. Who would ever suspect it?"

"Which secret?"

"Both of them."

Before this could derail into another discussion about the relationship between Phineas and Candace, Kevin spoke up, her instincts prompting her to defuse the conflict almost without realizing that was what she was doing. And besides, she did have something important to say. "You mentioned that zebras and platypuses and dogs and cats are like fish here" she said. "Or at least, that most people think they are."

"In most cases they are, yes – and when they aren't, few people know about it" Four replied. "What do you – oh." She blinked. "I suppose it's a good thing we had this discussion before dinner."

A chill ran down Kevin's spine. "You – you mean it's true?" she whispered. It had been a stray thought, a potential implication that she had wanted to clarify because surely she was overthinking this, but… "People actually eat them? Platypuses, and zebras, and…"

"Well, not them," Four corrected her. "Not most of the time, at least." She took a few steps closer to Kevin and put a hand on her shoulder. "But when it comes to pigs and cows and sheep and chickens… yes, I'm afraid so. OWCA has a tight regulatory policy now, though, so the only ones that get eaten are the ones that truly aren't sentient. So it's no different from fish."

Kevin shuddered. She knew that was true, that it made perfect sense for the people in this dimension to eat non-sentient animals… but even with that in mind, it creeped her out. She had some friends who were chickens, or pigs. The thought that they could be eaten by others if they had been born in this other dimension was enough to disgust her beyond belief.

But they aren't, her mind tried to tell her. These creatures aren't alive in the same way they are in your dimension. They are like fish, remember? It all makes sense to eat them.

It made no sense at all. She had… no immediate logical objections, and yet, she was incredibly creeped out beyond belief.

And yet, she felt that strong urge to yell at Four and One for the monstrous crimes they had no doubt committed.

A horrifying thought occurred to her that banished all other horrifying thoughts from the forefront of her mind. She hadn't given much thought to the 'cheese' salad she was eating earlier, because she had figured that she simply didn't know this cheese thing. It was probably just something exotic from another country that she'd never heard of or eaten before – that happened all the time. But with this in mind…

"I… I had this thing called 'cheese' sprayed over my salad this morning" she spoke up, shivering. "Was that…" She couldn't finish her sentence. She didn't want to discover that she'd been basically reduced to cannibalism, but… she had to know. She needed to be tough and brave it out, because if she didn't, the idea of what had been in that salad would haunt her for the rest of her days.

Four smiled reassuringly at her. "No, cheese isn't meat – that's what we call the edible parts of animals," she replied. "It's made out of milk, actually."

Kevin was relieved for all of one second before something new grossed her out. "What, like a mother's milk?"

Four frowned. "No, like cow's milk… oh. I get what you mean." She smiled vaguely. "If it makes you feel any better, it's soy cheese – that's artificial cheese created from plants. I have to eat it that way because I'm lactose intolerant – that basically means I'm mildly allergic to all products made out of milk."

Kevin supposed that that thought made her feel a little better. So it wasn't real mother's milk or something derived from it, but it was something specifically designed to emulate it. Not to mention the creepy idea of being allergic to something derived from cows. It was almost – not quite, of course, but almost – the same as being allergic to humans. Maybe there were some people out there who couldn't eat humans because they were allergic to them? It all sounded like very bizarre science-fiction.

And speaking of science-fiction…

"Your neighborhood looks really cool!" Candace Six gushed, walking into the room. "I've never seen such large grassy fields in a residential area – outside of Naboo, of course, and there you can't go for more than a few steps without running into a forest or a waterfall. Waterfalls are such wastes, by the way. It's water falling down over and over again, without anyone using it. Sure, it was a beautiful sight when Phineas and I went there on our honeymoon, but after some time we just got freaked out by the fact that it was all flowing away without being used. Oh, and I spoke to Five this morning – is it true that your planet has it all? Deserts, and waterfalls, and snow, and forests?" She grinned. "That's pretty cool, really."

"Well, somebody is in a good mood," Four remarked as Six joined their table – even One had returned to sitting down and eating her soggy cereal now, albeit at a long distance from Kevin.

Six shrugged. "It's something Phineas taught me. I know we're in a bad situation, and we're not out of the woods by a long shot, but there is hope, and in the meantime we have to keep our spirits up. I… I'm not always good at it, and I always try to stay alert because bad things do happen, but I do try to relax."

"You're… the one from outer space, aren't you?" Kevin spoke up. "Do you have sentients up there? I mean, you obviously do, but do you have othersentient species, species that aren't human like us?"

"We do" Six affirmed, frowning briefly. "Like Twi'leks, or Wookiees, or Togruta's… why, what's your point? Are you saying that… they don't exist here?"

"That's one part of it, yes" Kevin replied. "Or at least, I think so?" She glanced up at Four for a split second. "But I was mainly wondering whether that means you guys still eat… something called 'meat' up there. We'd been having this… discussion about it, and I was wondering whether that worked for you as well, considering you have this entirely different background compared to us."

Six thoughtfully put a hand to her chin. "I guess that's true? Well, we still eat meat in our galaxy. Not of any of the species I just mentioned, of course, but there are plenty of other ones that aren't sentient. Take bantha's, for instance. My brother-in-law makes the best bantha stew you've ever tasted. It's a recipe from his mother. I'd go crazy if I could never eat that again."

Kevin nodded, feeling rather uncertain about this whole thing. On one hand, Six did eat meat, of quite a few species apparently, but there were plenty of other non-human sentient species around in her world(s) which she didn't eat. That was… that was vaguely relatable. Kevin could work with that. It was no weirder than eating fish, and she'd done that once on a cultural exchange program. Which had been a strange experience in itself, but nowhere near as gross as eating cheese or meat would be.

Before she could spent too much time mulling over this subject (and realizing what must have been in the refrigerator or the fridge that morning) One spoke up. "You… you said you were married to Phineas, right?" she said, still unable to keep the revulsion out of her voice. "Because you guys didn't know at first that… well, that you were siblings?" Six nodded. "So how… how did that work?"

Six blinked, seeing Four and One looking at her with interest. "Well, that's a long story" she replied. "I left Tatooine when I was just a little girl – in retrospect, I suppose I could have been captured by the Empire or at least brainwashed or influenced to some extent, but at the time I was convinced that I was doing the right thing. I'd always hated it when people complained for no reason, and the Empire offered me a chance to dosomething about it. I became one of the most zealous soldiers the galaxy had… but that all ended on the Death Star. I suppose… have you guys heard of the Death Star? You know, the big super weapon the Empire built to wipe out opposition to its reign?"

"I know there was something called a 'Peace Moon' in Space Adventure IV," Candace Four mused. "It was a pretty creative idea, or at least, it was until they had to top it with that Armistice Asteroid in Part V. That was… kind of silly, if you ask me." She shook her head. "Still, as far as I know no such thing ever existed in real life, and I think I've been to outer space often enough to be able to tell. I suppose there is that giant omnicidal tower still out there… but I don't think that's quite the same thing."

Six stared at her for a long time before shaking her head. "Okay, so like I said, the Death Star was where it all happened. I was… I don't think I was much older than you are now, One. My squad and I were assigned to guard duty… or actually we had a mission to get socks for Darth Vader, but that's another long story that I don't want to bore you with. We managed to run across some rebels who had stolen the plans for the Death Star, and in my attempts to pursue the rebel I ended up falling off a ledge. I would have plummeted into a deep chasm if I hadn't been able to hold on, but I knew I couldn't do that for much longer… and then the rebel came, and helped me back up." She shook her head, a slight smile appearing on her face. "That rebel was Phineas, and even after all those years I've known him since then I can't imagine why he saved me. He just did. And it… it turned my life around. I realized that the Empire I'd been serving all these years was wrong, and that I wanted to be with the Rebellion… or at least, I wanted to be where Phineas was. I saved him from his brother – that's another long story – and we just managed to catch the last bus pod off the Death Star. That night, at the party at the Rebel Base, I realized with some help from my squad that I was in love with him. It took some time to win him over because he'd gotten a crush on a smuggler named Isabella – I guess that could be the same Isabella that's married to your galaxy's Ferb here? – but in the end, he returned my feelings. It was only after that that I found out that we were related, and, well, it seemed so irrelevant. Maybe if I'd known right away it would have stopped me, but not at that point. We chose to stay together, and it's the best decision I've ever made in my life. Which isn't saying much, but like Phineas always says, it doesn't matter how many wrong decisions you make before you make the right one as long as you make that right one count for something."

Four smiled. "That's a really sweet story, Six. In our world, Phineas was the one who had to convince me – but, well, I suppose the entire dynamic would have been different there."

One's expression was something between insecure and just plain disturbed. "But… Phineas is still a few years younger than you, isn't he?" she asked. "So if you were about my age when you guys met, he… he would still have been a little kid, like my brother is. And Jeremy… don't tell me you don't even have him in your world!" She frowned. "Although I suppose that might make it worse, if Jeremy Johnson was around but you… you still decided to go for your brother."

Kevin could see that Six was disturbed by One's reaction, but equally so that she was determined not to let it get to her. "I told you, I didn't know he was my brother, and I don't know anybody named Jeremy Johnson" she replied. "And even if I had met him then, he wouldn't have been the guy who had saved my life, the infinitely kind guy who had gotten me to rethink everything I knew about who I was. And yes, Phineas is a couple of years my junior. So what? It's not like I was so much of an adult at the time, given how I still thought that oppressing rebels was the right thing to do. I just wanted to be cool, and mature, but in reality that was the most immature thing I could have wanted. Whereas Phineas was entirely focused on saving people like me, people who could have been his enemies but whom he was determined to make his friends." She looked up at the ceiling, a far-away look in her eyes. "He was older and wiser than I was in many ways – and he still is to this day. The best partner I could ever have asked for."

Candace One stared at her. "I… I…" She shook her head and slumped back down. "That's not true" she murmured softly. "That's not true."

Kevin herself wasn't sure what to make of Six's claims. Yes, Petra was a great guy, and she loved her brother dearly, but he did have his moments of naivety which Six was glossing over (well, unless her Phineas was fundamentally different to Petra, but somehow Kevin doubted that). And then there was Six's obvious connection of that praise for their brother to the idea that she should be in a romantic relationship with him, and that… well, that certainly wasn't something Kevin was prepared to do. Her little brother was great, but she was in love with someone else, and from the expressions on her face Six almost seemed to be implying that she believed that Kevin and One and all the others should be with him in a romantic way as well. Which was not something Kevin was at all prepared to contemplate.

The doorbell rang, suddenly disturbing Kevin's reverie. Four pairs of eyes shot to the living room door, but it was Candace Four who stood up. "It's probably Ferb" she said. "He did say that he would be coming over as soon as he could."

Kevin nodded, wondering whether the guy she was about to meet was as similar to the Fern Fletcher she knew as the near-identical names seemed to indicate. From looking around the table, Six had the same question on her mind, while One was still too broken up over the recent conversation to really think about anything.

'Ferb' entered a few moments later, and at first glance he did look almost exactly like Fern – tall, green haired, and a relatively stoic expression. Candace Six looked up at him and grinned. "Hey Ferb!" she said. "So, you're married to Isabella here, huh? That's definitely… different." She shook her head, and when she next looked at him it was a strange look of unfamiliarity and unease, as if she was looking at a stranger after initially assuming he was a friend. "I mean, if it's what you want? It can't be easy for you, or for the kids, but I… well, I guess it's none of my business."

There seemed to be a twinkle of amusement in Ferb's eyes before he gave her a brief nod. Candace One, by contrast, just stared at him. "You… you're so tall," she blurted out.

"Well, obviously" Four said with a grin. "It has been more than twenty years, you know. I guess that it technically hasn't, since you're from 2038 in your world… but that's a long story" she finished, looking at Ferb, who was giving her an inquisitive look. "Hey, I told you that this was a strange situation."

Ferb chuckled. "I can deal with a little strangeness, Candace," he replied in a familiar British-accented baritone. "Are you coming with us?"

Candace Four nodded. "I am. Let me just check upon the kids first." She shook her head. "Phineas and I agreed that we shouldn't let them get involved on the first day – he didn't want any of my counterparts to run into them, and I… well, these issues can get sensitive, and I don't want Xavier and Mandy running around that. I know they think they can help, and to some extent I'm sure they can, but not just yet." She frowned. "By the way, how are Isabella and the kids holding out? Itching with nervousness and frustrated that they can't come over yet?" Ferb gave her a look. "I know, I know. An army of me's isn't that exciting. But it is something new, you know."

Ferb gave a barely perceptible nod and Four walked off into the hallway, leaving the three of them all alone. "So, you're Ferb?" Kevin asked. "You… your name is Fern in my world. I know that must make you think you're probably a girl there, but you're not. Apparently between our dimensions, the names belonging to each gender got switched."

Ferb didn't answer. Given what she knew of her stepbrother, Kevin hadn't really expected him to do so. She wasn't even sure why she had spoken up in the first place, besides a growing desire to get away from the disturbing things that still plagued her thoughts. Ugh, she should be better than this. She should be able to maintain control. Kevin was sure that the Hirano woman would laugh if she saw her losing her cool like this.

"You're still Phineas' stepbrother where I come from" Six spoke up. "And you can use the Force. But you're not a Jedi, aren't you? I mean, the prohibition on attachment has been relaxed, but I doubt you'd be able to get away with straight-up being married and having kids if you were a full-fledged member of the Order."

"In my world, you're just Ferb," Candace One said, apparently feeling the desire to speak up as well – maybe it was just because she wanted to feel included. "You're my little brother, and you and Phineas build impossible things in the backyard." She frowned. "I don't want to accuse you of anything… and, well, I know this isn't true, I've seen them disappear without you doing anything for so many times, but… you didn't really have anything to do with the Mysterious Force, did you?"

"Of course he does!" Six exclaimed. "He may not be a particularly strong Force sensitive, but he can use it. Ferb, can you lift that apple?"

"The Force hasn't got anything to do with apples!" Candace One snapped. "I mean, I suppose it would if they were hyper-advanced apples… somehow… and that's why Mom wouldn't be allowed to see them, but that doesn't make any sense."

Ferb smiled. "What does, in our lives?"

"Xavier and Amanda are okay," Candace Four said, walking back in and taking immediate advantage of the silence that had fallen over the room. "I was definitely right, though – Xavier was already messaging Fred about trying to sneak behind our backs for a visit to Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. I just disabled the teleportation app on their phones again. Did you do the same thing for your kids?" Ferb blinked. "Good. Then as far as I'm concerned, we can go. I'll text Phineas to tell him we're coming."

They walked off into the hallway, past the kids' door (which One deliberately avoided by walking on the other side of the corridor) but Four didn't stay quiet. "I know I'm being a little harsh on them" she said. "I mean, they're teenagers. They want to prove themselves, and they want to get involved. I've been there – heck, I suppose you could say that I'm still there."

"Hey!" One exclaimed, protesting not so much against the words but against the pointed look Four was shooting her.

"But I just want to keep all this under control as well as I can, for now" Four continued. "A lot of the things we're inevitably going to discuss… they're private. Xavier, Amanda, Angie, Fred and Milly shouldn't get involved – they shouldn't even want to get involved. But you know how kids are. You ask them to stay inside, and that's only going to result in them putting up holographic images of themselves and teleporting to places where they can't be detected."

Kevin wasn't sure what disturbed her so much about that sentence. Maybe it was the casual way in which Candace Four had said it, and how Ferb Four had nodded along. Sure, it could be one of those jokes in which you made a point of the weirdness around you and at one point stopped laughing about it because it had become a running gag… but it didn't feel like that. It had been a serious comment coming from Candace, and Ferb had treated it as such.

This dimension… was different to her own. The relationship between Candace and Phineas proved that. The names proved that, of course. The way they ate this 'meat' proved it. And the personal lives in which kids regularly put up holographic images of themselves in order to escape detection proved it.

It shouldn't disturb her, really. She was in a different place, a different world, and she should know to take the things around her in stride. Like she had mentioned to Candace Six, when in Rome, you should do as the Romans do. Except that Kevin knew that if she were to travel to the Ancient Rome of this world, she wouldn't be travelling to the Empire that had first allowed equids a say in a national government. And if even the past was different like that, the present would be likely to be even more different.

She'd try, Kevin resolved as she joined the others in Ferb's car. She would attempt to keep the peace. It was her duty to ensure that the democratic will of those around her was followed when possible and that tough decisions were taken when necessary. For neither of those tasks could she use a judgment that was clouded by her own background. Therefore, she needed to try to cope.

But unlike when she had woken up this morning, Kevin wasn't so sure whether she would always be able to succeed.


	11. How Did We End Up Here Again?

Candace Two was ready. She was so ready for this.

Today was the day that Four's brothers finally started working on getting her home again - and she knew that Doofenshmirtz would show up to stop them. She just knew it. And she was just waiting for the opportunity to bash him in the face with her fists or the nearest other deadly weapon. This was the confrontation she'd been waiting for. Doofenshmirtz might think they were trapped in another dimension with him, but he was going to be sorely mistaken.

He was trapped in a dimension with her, and she was going to make sure the amount of fire and fury that descended upon his head for this plot was no like other he'd ever seen.

She'd been up all night, watching and waiting, planning and preparing. And also keeping watch over Four's household, because Four and Four's Phineas were so naive that they actually trusted some fancy gadget to protect through the night. It was the most hilariously innocent thing that Candace Two had seen in years, and had this not been such a serious matter, she might have been inclined to have a laugh or two at their expense.

But as it was, there was simply no time for mirth. She restricted herself to a grim smile, and set about keeping everyone safe throughout the rest of the night. All-nighters were no big deal to her - she'd pulled many of them before, even multiple consecutively. When your responsibilities were this grave and numerous, there was simply no time for such luxuries as sleep.

As she'd expected, given his apparent naivety about such things, Four's brother had been relatively easy to fool - she'd told him that she was going to sleep, of course, because what else would she do? And he'd seemed satisfied and walked off.

So soon as she heard him shut his own door, however, she was up again.

"Can't you be quiet?" one of the other Candaces in the room muttered.

But Candace Two didn't respond - instead slipping quietly out the door. Her snug bodysuit was black for a reason, after all, and a childhood spent skulking about in the shadows had taught her a thing or two about how to be quiet if the need arose.

For the first hour or so, she patrolled the house, pacing up and down the stairs, and around the yard. It was a little past three in the morning when another thought occurred to her.

Bugs.

Of course. If Doofenshmirtz didn't attack during this night, when they were all tired, there had to be a reason. It was a perfect opportunity to attack, after all. The layout of the house was absolutely terrible for any kind of tactical encounter, and the owners foolishly trusted in some automatic system to keep intruders out. Sure, it might keep out a person... under ideal circumstances, but could it really withstand a concentrated attack by hundreds of plasma laser cannon- wielding NORMbots commanded by a ruthless dictator who would stop at no atrocities to ensure his will was enforced?

That's right - she thought not.

And a perfectly good reason to explain why that attack never came was if the house had somehow been bugged before their arrival. She wasn't sure how that could have been pulled off, but if anyone could it, Doofenshmirtz could - and she wasn't about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It may seem paranoid, but this was how you stayed alive. Even after Doofenshmirtz's overthrow, stories about militia members who weren't careful enough and ended up as Goozim-chow were all to common. No one listened too you, until you were right. And by then it was often too late. They knew to submit quietly to Candace's leadership now.

So she headed back inside and scoured the household top to bottom for bugs. And sure enough, attached to a wall in the living room, up near the roof, was a small white box with a tiny light on it blinking slowly and dimly. A slightly satisfied smile crossed her face as she saw it.

Not today, Doofenshmirtz, she thought grimly.

Pulling a chair over, she reached up and tore the gadget out of the wall. It wasn't nearly hard as one might think. She slipped back out the yard, and with a few well-placed swings, made sure that that microphone would never transmit anything again.

Even as she ground the shattered pieces of plastic and metal underfoot, she knew that this wasn't the end. It was only a shadow of things to come. Doofenshmirtz was ruthlessly efficient and endlessly devious. If she was to keep Four's Phineas safe while he fixed her a portal home, then she could never let her guard down, not even for a second.

Not that she was in the habit of letting that down anyway.

With the house successfully cleared of wiretaps and other listening devices, she resumed her guard of the yard, keeping two eyes out for anything even slightly out of the ordinary.

Thankfully, it appeared that her finding those bugs had thrown a snarl in Doofenshmirtz's plans. She could almost imagine him growling in frustration to himself, listening to nothing but static where that microphone was supposed to be.

The sun slowly peaked over the horizon as she paced endlessly, back and forth, keeping watch. When at last the light of the morning had chased away enough of the darkness that you might reasonably consider it morning-time at all, she stopped.

It wasn't over - no, far from it. It had only just begun. She may have delayed it, but it would only be temporary. She returned inside the house, where the other Candaces were beginning to stir, and retrieved the chairs from around the kitchen table, which she jammed under the doorknobs of the front and back doors of the house.

No one was going in or out without her knowing about it. They may not like it, but she was fairly sure they liked being alive. Therefore, they could suck it up and accept it quietly, or else she would make them suck it up and accept it quietly. She had a mission to do.

And that mission was protect her city, her home, her family, her little brothers. Nothing and no one came before that. If Four or her brother or any of the other Candaces assumed otherwise, they would be sorely mistaken.

She stopped only for exactly forty-five seconds to relieve herself and another three minutes to grab ahold of some bread and meat out of the refrigeration system. If you weren't going to sleep, you had to get your energy somehow.

The meat was cold, but that was no obstacle to her. Indeed, compared to the things she'd subsisted on during the heyday of Doofenshmirtz's tyranny, it was downright sumptuous.

This was a hostile battlefield, practically. What was she going to do, complain?

She counted everyone as they milled about the house, wasting time with stupid things like showering, which was hardly a luxury they had time for. Doofenshmirtz could be upon them at any second now, and people like Candace Three still were willing to risk being caught naked and defenseless in the shower? What would she do if a NORMbot was to blast through the bathroom door just then?

Get massacred, that's what she would do.

And all that risk for what? Getting clean? It was hardly worth it, in Candace Two's opinion. There was a time and a place, and practically in the middle of a battlefield was neither that time, nor that place. And given what she'd observed of the other's behavior, she was beginning to think that she was the only one who head their head on straight.

The little girl was about as useless in a fight as they came, and Three and Four and Five were too busy bickering with each other over the most banal of subjects anyway. Six had some kind of gun, but thought she was such a bigshot that she could use it to get her way - well, that hadn't lasted very long, and it had sufficiently dashed Two's hope of the woman having any sort of real skill whatever. Seven was... just a troublemaker in general, and Kevin, at the very least, seemed happy enough to obey orders.

Not that it mattered if she wasn't. None of the Candaces were going to resist anything stronger than a stiff breeze by the looks of it, and most of them looked ready to faint at the drop of hat anyway. At least Six was mildly resilient, if it weren't for that fatal flaw of being actually stupid. Candace had never had patience for such things, and she trusted she'd made herself oh-so-perfectly clear. Six wouldn't try anything smart again, not if she valued her unbroken kneecaps.

Just as she was contemplating the feasibility of going up there and dragging out Four's brother and telling him that he'd better get busy and quit stalling around, he came into the kitchen and announced that they were leaving anyway, for some place called 'Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated'. Candace Two didn't know what that place was, but she didn't like the word 'Incorporated' very much.

No, wait, she was pretty sure 'Fletcher-Flynn' was her family's old surname from before the Era of Doofenshmirtz. Okay, that was… interesting, if only slightly.

But curiosity killed the cat - and it'd killed far too many cats in Candace Two's lifetime for her liking.

Candaces Three and Five and Seven decided to come along with Four's brother to wherever his laboratory was.

Four decided to stay behind for a while, saying something about 'the kids' and Six and Kevin claimed that they didn't mind staying at the house to wait.

Obviously, Two was going with Four's brother as well. It was not ideal that she would be unable to protect Four and Six and Kevin, but it was unavoidable. Four's brother's plans to get her home were more important right now. If Four and Six and Kevin wanted to stay behind, they'd have to fend for themselves. Two wasn't about to waste the brainpower on worrying about them.

And of course, there was One - but Candace Two hadn't seen One come out of her assigned barracks all morning, and assumed that she was still fast asleep. Fair enough. If she wanted to take that risk, then she was welcome to it. Candace Two wasn't going lose sleep over it.

As they rode in this car to wherever Four's brother was driving them, he and Three rambled back and forth to each other about things that Candace Two honestly couldn't have cared less about. It seemed to annoy Five and Seven, who sat silently in the back seat, glowering at everyone, and Seven doing the weird glitching thing.

If any one of them should turn out to be a mole from Doofenshmirtz, she was pretty sure it was going to be Seven. That was part of the reason why Two kept a special close eye on her. Seven complained - as a mole might do - but Candace Two didn't care, nor did she sto

It wasn't a particularly long drive to their destination. Candace Two had memorized the exact map of turns between Four's house and her brother's laboratory. Traveling back and forth between the two would be a snap, if she should need to return there on her own at some point in the future.

"Here we are," Four's brother announced. "Ferb's gonna be here as soon as he can manage it, so we can start planning stuff to try when he gets here." He waved for them to follow as he started towards the doors. "Come on."

Two couldn't believe sheer naivety. Just when she'd thought she'd seen the depth of it, someone else always surprised her.

"No, you get behind me," she ordered shortly, reaching out with her staff and blocking Four's brother's way until she got in front of the group. "Right now, you've got the skills to get me home. Therefore, your safety is priority number one." She eyed the towering building through the lenses of her sunglasses. "That means while we're in here, you are never alone. No matter what. I will always be watching over you, my eyes glued onto you at any given moment in the day."

"Even if I'm in the bathroom?" he joked.

But this was no joking matter. "Especially if you're in the bathroom," she rejoined, her voice not rising or lowering a single pitch. "That's the definition of 'never'. And also the time during which you'll be most vulnerable to ambush." She paused for a moment. "I will not allow that to happen."

"What about me?" that insufferable Candace Three protested. "I could get us home too, you know. Why don't I get a bodyguard?"

Candace Two turned and peered at Three over the tops of her glasses. "Because I don't take lightly to forgiving people for screwing up. It's not something that's sustainable in the field. Screw-ups die. And when there's an attack, if I can only save one of your lives, you can bet it's gonna that person with the best chance of getting me home in one piece."

"Typical," she heard Seven mutter under her breath.

"Can it," she snapped in that general direction. "Unless you'd like me to remind why exactly I'm the one in charge here." She motioned in Seven's general direction with her stick.

Four's brother seemed slightly taken aback by the motion - not that Two could really say she cared either way. He may be a version of Phineas, but even her Phineas knew who was in charge when the rubber met the road. And being trapped in another dimension while Doofenshmirtz laid waste to her home certainly seemed like a plenty 'rubber-meeting-road' situation.

"Behind me," she repeated briskly, stepping forward. She eyed up and down the sidewalk as they walked up to the doors. Sure, Four's Phineas - did that make him 'Phineas Four'? - had said that was his building, his laboratory, or whatever. But that didn't mean that Doofenshmirtz couldn't have somehow gotten here first and laid out a trap. Or infiltrated the place with spies. Shepherd spies, perhaps, the worst kind.

And if any of that had happened, she was not about to be caught lying down.

She burst through the front doors, determined to take any would-be ambushers by surprise. There was some woman sitting at a desk just inside the doors, who jerked back slightly, looking somewhat wide-eyed and startled at the sudden entrance.

"And who are you?" Candace Two coolly asked, positioning herself so as to best tower over her. It was all about the intimidation factor in interrogations, really. "It'd better be an answer I like. If it's not, well, just because I don't feed people to Goozims like your boss doesn't mean you'll be getting out of here alive."

"Candace Two - Two!" Phineas Four exclaimed. "No, no, it's okay. She's just my secretary."

Candace Two glared at the woman behind the desk, studying her hard for a moment. "Fair enough." She straightened back up and adjusted her sunglasses. "You're sure you recognize her?"

Phineas Four nodded rapidly. "Yes, yes, it's alright - trust me."

"Hmph." She knocked the end of her staff against the edge of the desk. "We'll see."

It was the fact that he was another version of her little brother, and that fact alone, that made her even somewhat receptive of the idea. Anyone else? Not hardl

"I'm sorry," Phineas Four said to the secretary. "We're some issues with interdi-"

Candace Two clamped her hand down on his shoulder, cutting him off before he could get too far along on that tack. You never knew who could be listening, who might find this information useful. "Hardly," she said icily. "Where we're from is just about none of your concern. Stand down, civilian."

"Oh! Uh, yeah? I guess? We have some… extended family over? From out-of-state?" He reached up and scratched behind his ear.

"Extended family?" the secretary echoed, eyeing Candaces Three and Five and Seven, who'd just walked in through the front doors. "I… see?" She hesitated. "Why do they all look like your sister's... identical twins or something?"

"Really?" Phineas Four shifted back and forth on his feet. "I… hadn't noticed."

"Alright, enough of this useless chitchat," Candace Two growled, grabbing ahold of Phineas' arm and pulling him after her. "You have work to do. You need to show me your space so I can scout it and you can get started."

"I, uh, okay, I guess." Phineas pointed at the elevator on the other end of the room. "Right through there. Can I, uh, have my arm back?"

She grudgingly let go of his arm, but then resolutely shook her head. "Elevators are deathtraps if you know how to rig them. And Doofenshmirtz certainly does. Come on, we're taking the stairs."

Even if they were heading to the very top of the building, the flights of steps that they'd have to take to get there didn't pose any sort of threat to her. She was rather used to physical exertion by now. She'd seen twelve layers of windows on the outside of the building. So, twelve flights of stairs then? Or twenty-four, depending on how they were laid out? Piece of cake.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Candace Five (at least, Two was pretty it was Five) groaned. "Take the stairs?! Are you insane?"

Seven flickered briefly and rolled her eyes. "Yes, of course she is. They all are."

"You should totally have a Televator in here," Three commented. "They're pretty nifty. Or a quantum tunnel, which would probably be even better." She paused. "Yeah, definitely better."

"Well, there's none of those fancy gadgets here," Two interrupted. "So we're taking the stairs, all the way up if we have to."

"Actually," Phineas spoke up. "Down - my and Ferb's laboratory is in the basement, not on any of the upper floors."

"All the way down," Candace Two corrected herself. "My point still stands."

"I am not taking the stairs, no matter what you say," Five insisted. "I just simply refuse."

"For sure," Seven chimed in. "We're out of non-dimension-land or wherever now, so you're hardly the boss of us anymore."

Candace Two gripped her staff tighter and pondered the feasibility of… forcefully poking, yes, Five - and Seven - for their insufferable insubordination. This wasn't the place or time for this, and she simply wasn't about to tolerate it.

"No, no, it's okay," Phineas cut in again. "You two - three? - can take the elevator. Candace Two and I-" he hesitated for a moment, exhaling. "-will take the stairs."

"It's for your own protection," Two reminded him.

"...yes, so you say." He looked back at her. "I really do think it'd be okay to take the elevator, you know. I was just here yesterday, after all, and nothing at all was going on weird."

"Whatever - your loss." Seven stamped over to the elevator and pressed a button to call it down.

"Look," Candace firmly told Phineas. "I'm the one keeping you safe, because you're the one who can get me home. So if I say we take the stairs, we take the stairs."

She could hardly believe that she had to explain this to him. With elevators, so many things could go wrong. The doors could open and reveal an ambush on the other side, with them all trapped inside with no place to run. Someone could cut through the cables from either above or below, trapping them all in-between floors, or in a worse-case scenario, sending them all hurtling towards their deaths. Plus, it was like the first rule of tactical engagements: always avoid places with one entrance and exit if possible, same as places with more than three entrances and exits.

"Yeah, uh, sorry Phineas," Candace Three said. "I'm…" she hesitated, glancing at Five and Seven and back again. "Actually, you know what? I'll come with you guys."

"Good riddance," one of the two over by the elevator mumbled under their breath.

"Come on," Candace Two interrupted curtly. "Stairs. Now. Three, if you're coming, then all I can say is 'keep up'."

Three grumbled to herself for a moment, but grudgingly followed behind. Phineas pointed out the door to the stairwell, and Two remained safely in front of him as they descended the flights into the basement.

When she pushed open the door at the bottom, carefully scouting the surrounding for any sign of potential ambushers, she was greatly relieved to see none. Five and Seven were here already, so she supposed that any potential ambushers down here might have been flushed out by their presence. Or not, depending on if Doofenshmirtz had issued orders to specifically target this dimension's Phineas or not.

But the very lack of any signs of a coming attack... it also set her on edge. Doofenshmirtz was going to strike, she could feel it in her very bones. She almost wished that he would hurry up and get here, so that all this tense waiting would be at an end.

But that, too, may been part of his plan. Maybe he was hoping that by holding back, she would drive herself crazy and become mentally compromised when he actually did put his master plan into motion. Well, if so, he was going to be sorely mistaken. Candace Two had been living on the edge ever since her childhood. It was her home now, to put it quite frankly. She had no problem remaining here for the duration of her stay in this other dimension as well.

"So this is your laboratory?" Three asked. "It's… really cool."

Phineas nodded. "Yes, yes it is. Much better than the place at home, hm?"

Three nodded. "Oh, definitely."

"Hmmph," either Five or Seven snorted. "Looks just like I would have imagined the place where you cook up schemes to ruin innocent people's lives."

Phineas blinked, but smiled. "...thank you? Uh…" he cleared his throat. "Anyway - this is the place where we can really start working toward getting you all home."

Candace Two watched Candaces Five and Seven whisper something between themselves. She couldn't quite flawlessly make out what was passing between them, but it was something along the lines of, "Amazement? It's all he deserves anyway if you ask me. Pah."

To which Candace Five looked somewhat uneasy, but eventually said something that Two couldn't interpret because her hair was in the way.

"Well, it's time for you to get to work," she said aloud. "I'm going to make sure this place isn't bugged as well, so be careful with what you say until I've given you the all clear on that regard."

"As well?" Phineas echoed.

"You just can't admit that I am just as capable of this as anyone else, can you?" Candace Three protested.

Two shrugged. "You're hardly more than a liability. Ability means nothing without common sense."

Candace Three spluttered some nonsense about her son or something, but Two was hardly listening by this point. She'd become quite adept at tuning out a large portion of these other Candaces' random babbling over the past day or so. Which was a very good thing - she couldn't allow it to distract her from the task at hand, which, when you saw how much the other Candaces loved to wax loquacious about absolutely meaningless subjects, was certainly a possibility.

She cleared her throat loudly, interrupting Three's babbling and turned back to Phineas. "I'll give you the signal when I've examined the area. Until then, watch what you say. Don't want to divulge anything to… anyone who might be listening in."

"Now, Two." Phineas Four put on a reasonable tone of voice. "I highly doubt anyone's spying on us right now."

Two nodded. "Exactly." At least he still had some common sense.

"No, seriously I meant-" he cut himself off and exhaled slowly. "Never mind. You just do you." He turned back to Three, who looked like she was about to explode by now, and motioned over towards a large desk pushed up against one wall. "Come on, let's get started, shall we? Don't want Ferb to get here and think we've been slacking off."

"Finally, someone acknowledges me," Three muttered, shooting Candace Two a dirty look that almost escaped her notice, but not quite. For a split second, she debated derailing her mission to teach that woman a lesson, but then decided against it.

All of these other Candaces were constantly lucky that Two had better things to do than beat common sense into them, although it certainly wouldn't have hurt them.

Well, it might have hurt them a bit. But the common sense would probably have been worth it. At least it would have been worth it to Candace Two. But right now, she simply didn't have the time - and it simply wasn't of high enough priority for her to bother with making time for it.

She set off around the laboratory, making sure to leave no stone unturned in her search of the area. Desks and assorted machines with long names were moved away from the walls, boxes were opened and their contents thoroughly searched, doors were thrown open and their closets were thoroughly scoured from top to bottom.

It took her all of about twenty minutes to completely finish turning the whole place upside down, in search of any trace of Doofenshmirtz, no matter how tiny or minuscule those traces may be.

They'd only be 'tiny' or 'minuscule' to the others, of course. To Candace Two, even a speck of hair out of place would be more than enough to tell her what she needed to know. She'd been in constant struggle against Doofenshmirtz - first trying to overthrow his dictatorial rule of cruelty over the Tri-State Area, then after succeeding for just a short while, trying to protect the same Tri-State Area and it's people, so recently freed from those cruel bonds, from the overthrown but certainly not defeated overlord.

It was her life's goal to bring him fully to justice one day. And one day, she was going to do it. Busting Doofenshmirtz had, for lack of a better description, been her life. And now, he'd gone just a step too far. For this, he was going down, down, down.

There was no doubt about it.

She paced up and down the length of the room as Candace Three and Phineas Four rambled to each other about things that she presumed were leading up to getting them home. They'd better be leading in that direction - or she was going to be absolutely fed up with them wasting this much precious time on some other stupid subject.

She half-watched Candaces Five and Seven out of the corner of her eye. They weren't doing much of anything, really, beyond sitting on a couple of chairs pushed against the far wall and occasionally saying something to each other while looking supremely bored and critical of everything going on around them.

"What are you doing?" she settled upon asking Phineas Four, as a way to ensure that they really weren't just wasting time. Once again, Candace Three looked miffed, but Candace Two didn't care.

Three had already proved herself to be sorely lacking in common sense - in a cool head. And no matter what she was or wasn't able to do, the fact that her feet weren't firmly planted on the ground made her definitively the second choice here, a distant second to Candace Four's brother. It wasn't anything personal, per se, just business.

But it was serious business that had no room to spare such things as 'feelings'. If it trampled on Candace Three's ego that she was being ignored in favor of Four's brother, then let it be trampled upon. It was objectively better, as far as Candace Two had seen, to go to Phineas Four. And when given the chance, who wouldn't make the objectively better choice?

And so she did.

Phineas Four looked up at her, looking mildly surprised. "Oh, uh-"

"Not wasting my time, I hope?" Though phrased as a question, the statement was crystal-clear and the threat of enforcement that lurked behind her words had never been stronger.

"No," Candace Three drawled. "I wish you'd quit that, you know. Why do you keep pacing back and forth? You're making it hard to concentrate on my work."

"Concentrate harder, then." This was exactly what she'd been thinking about earlier. If Candace Three was so inattentive and absentminded that a simple act such as Candace Two's patrol route around the room was able to draw her mind from her work, then it was clear that she'd been right in her mental decision to favor Four's brother.

"It's okay." Phineas Four glanced back at Candace Three for a moment, and Three almost immediately looked away as if she couldn't bear bringing herself to look Four's brother in the eye. "Of course we are - right now just trying to work out a method of powering an isotope replicator without damaging the axionic reaction nacelle."

"And don't say an actuator," Three nearly snapped. "If you'd actually listen to me once in awhile you'd know that I calculated that an actuator would obfuscate the wireless end-to-end conduit, effectively interpolating the resonator."

"Yes, yes it would," Phineas Four repeated. "We thought about recollimating the transwarp neutrino mutation - that'll force the system to collapse the quantum wavefront effect, and, according to our calculations, let us pressurise the ambient nadion stream."

Candace Three shook her head. "I don't know. The problem with that is the photonic E-M distortion. We could manipulate the magnatomic polaron field? It'll vary the auxiliary data coupling, which means it should also help to fluctuate the astrophysical tetryon variance."

"Possibly," Phineas agreed. "We still need to repair the photonic alternating inversion. Let's try energizing that accelerated E-M configuration instead. It'll save us having to oscillate the accelerated subspace harmonic, and - voila! - that should force the system to restrict the reciprocating nano effect."

"If the numbers work out," Three returned thoughtfully. "That might do it - or at least help doing it."

"This'll be much easier when Ferb gets here, don't worry." Phineas Four shook his head. "But we really should try to iron out some of these smaller kinks before then."

Candace Three pointed down to a piece of paper she'd taken to scribbling rapidly on. "Take a look at the quantum neutrino emission rates. If we boost the..."

That was just about enough for Candace Two. So long as Phineas Four was working to get her home, she was satisfied. And completely happy to tune out the rest of their nigh unintelligible conversation to each other. She had to do it enough in her home dimension with Dr. Baljeet that it came naturally to her by now.

Resuming her patrol around the room, she returned to half-watching Candaces Five and Seven slumped down in their chairs, looking as if they were waiting most impatiently for something.

Suddenly, Five shifted in her chair and got up, marching over to Four's Phineas. "How long is this going to take?"

Two wasn't about to let someone like Five distract Phineas from his work. Right now, him finishing that machine was priority number one. But before she could say anything, Phineas himself spoke up again.

"I… don't know, exactly." He glanced down at the papers on his desk again. "We're running into issues with cross-dimensional interference completely fudging a lot of our old data and wildly agitating the extra-dimensional flux waves."

"And?" Five demanded.

"Not too long, I don't think," he replied. "I'll be able to nail down a more accurate guess once Ferb gets here and we actually get started with the real construction of the thing, but it shouldn't be much more than a few-"

"Hours?"

Phineas Four smiled slightly, but shook his head. "At this point, 'days' is a closer estimate."

"You've got to be kidding me!" Five burst. "Again?! Did you - you didn't figure out anything from last time I was here?!"

"I mean, that was completely different?" Phineas raised one eyebrow. "I'm not exactly sure how much the machine that sent you home would help here, considering there's no one to send your mind to in your home dimension. Also, that it would leave your body behind. Here."

"Well, I - I - I-" Five spluttered angrily. "Ugh, I am so out of here!" She turned on her heel and stormed over to the elevator, pressing the button on the wall with such force that Candace Two thought she might break it.

The lack of self-discipline these other Candaces showed at times was simply unbelieveable.

"I told you so," Seven said, standing up and shooting a venomous look in Phineas Four's general direction. "He doesn't-"

The elevator doors slid open and Five and Seven disappeared behind them, and the rest of whatever Seven was about to say was lost entirely.

"Complete thickheads, the lot of them," Candace Two muttered to herself. "Running off alone like that. Who's going to be able to protect them now? Certainly not themselves." That idea made one corner of her mouth turn slightly upwards, in an expression that was the closest thing to a smile that she'd had since falling into the non-dimension-place. Yes… because she could totally see those two women - who'd practically done nothing but complain and waste precious seconds since moment one - able to react with the sort of reflexes that were needed to prevent being literally blown into two halves by a NORMbot's plasma laser cannon. Totally. "And certainly not me. I have more important things to do."

She resumed her endless patrol up and down the basement-laboratory floor while Phineas Four continued to work busily on some papers scattered over his desk.

It'd about a half an hour - or at somewhere relatively around there - when she decided that it might be beneficial to the safety of the mission if she made sure the floor directly above them was clear as well. In the case of an attack, she needed to have as many alternate escape routes as possible, after all.

But first, she needed to make sure that no one came down into the basement without her knowing it. The door into the stairwell was fine - so long as she was in between the basement floor door and the door into the floor above it, any potential attackers would have to get through her first.

It was just that stupid elevator, really. She hated that thing with a passion. It needed to be disabled so that she could ensure that no one could use it sneak onto the ground floor without her knowledge.

Well, elevators were easy enough to disable if you knew what you were doing - which was part of the reason that she'd insisted on take the stairs in the first place.

She marched over to the elevator doors and summoned it downwards. When the doors opened, she reached in with her staff and tapped the button to the top floor. The doors slid closed, and the cab began its trip upwards. But it never made it. Candace Two hadn't fully pulled her staff out from between the doors, and now was able to use that leverage to pry the doors open, exposing the empty shaft and thick cables that suspended the elevator. From there it was a simple matter of reaching into a nearby box and pulling out a random piece of metal and jamming it into the gears and cogs spinning rapidly.

There was a loud crunching noise, and sparks flew every which way as the machinery ground to an abrupt halt.

There. Candace Two thought. Finally we're safe from that deathtrap, at least.

She wasn't sure how neither Phineas Four nor Candace Three had heard the clatter that had occurred as she stopped up the elevator, but she didn't particularly care, either.

Slipping quietly out the door, she returned to the stairwell, climbing the steps until she reached the floor just above.

The door swung inwards quietly, and she found herself in what appeared to be… some kind of office building? Or office section of a building?

Her grip on her trusty staff tightened slightly in preparedness. This was what she'd been raised to do. Been raised by herself to do - to keep those whom she loved safe. Because Phineas and Ferb were her innocent little brothers, and she'd been determined to protect that innocence for all it was worth, even at the cost of her own.

But that was all in the past now. Right now, the top goal was getting home. And making sure that this first floor above the basement was completely Doofenshmirtz-free was the way she made sure that happened.

Failure was simply not an option.

* * *

Candace Three wasn't actually having a wholly terrible time, at least not at that exact moment. She was 'doing mad science' as Xavier sometimes put it, and it really was something she enjoyed doing. Of course, the fact that Phineas wasn't there to doing the mad science along with her, or help her with fiddly bits, or to ramble on the way he did, or even just smile and be there was rather disheartening.

There was only so much she could do forget that fact - forget that the Phineas working diligently next to her wasn't Phineas at all. Just a spatio-temporal duplicate, one who could never replace the person he so much resembled.

Still, she tried to put those thoughts out of her mind and focus on her work. Somewhere in the back of her brain it registered that Two had left the room - that they were alone. Which was a tremendous relief in and of itself, honestly.

Without the constant scuffing of Two's endless pacing, however, an awkward silence built up in the basement between her and Other Phineas, until she could just about take it no longer.

She'd not seen him to be an unpleasant person, really. It was just her own confused internal emotions, which so strongly wanted him to be who he never could be, that messed everything up. But if she wanted to get through the almost palpable silence between them, she'd have to say something.

Taking a deep breath, she summoned up her courage. "So, your laboratory, hm?" It helped that she really did want to know more about this. "It's… really kinda cool. The whole building is. It's your building, I guess?"

Other Phineas nodded. "Well, it's not mine, per se - but it's mine and Ferb's. That's why we're both on the sign, after all."

"True," she agreed slowly. "It's really, really cool. Kinda makes me wish we had one too - though it'd be really a waste for us to have a building, considering CDI's only an umbrella corporation anyway."

"Yeah - you mentioned that before," Other Phineas replied. "I take it that means you don't really have a… corporate structure or anything?"

"It's just me and Phineas and Ferb," she said. "And Amanda and Xavier. No one else - the company really doesn't do anything except provide a single entity under which we can lump, like, expenses and business deals and tax stuff. No need for a building or anything for that stuff. It'd just be a waste. Plus, it'd disrupt our carefully balanced loan cycle."

"Fair enough." Other Phineas shrugged. "I take it that you do mostly the same stuff as we do there?"

Candace thought for a second. "I… guess you could say that? Not really. Well, sort of. The Force's never really let anything super cool get off the ground for too long, of course, but we manage. Turns out all you really need to attract attention is small stuff anyway. We patented this, like, new version of a catalytic converter for smokestacks that had about a three point seven percent improved conversion rate - and it took off big time. That one still earns us the most royalties out of everything."

"Sounds… interesting." Other Phineas bent down and fiddled with something on the floor that she couldn't quite see. "Well, I suppose that if it works, you shouldn't bother trying to fix it."

It was Candace's turn to shrug now. "Eh. It's not exactly what I pictured the future being like when I was a kid, but it's great all the same." She paused. "Not that anything really turned out like I originally pictured, to be fair."

"I was gonna ask you about that," Other Phineas picked up. "If it's okay with you, of course."

Candace hesitated, but being in the process of constructing the very machine that might well bring her home made her feel somewhat more at ease, even if she couldn't quite look Other Phineas in the eyes without feeling disconcerted. Seeing Phineas' face without the look in his eyes that Phineas had when he looked at her was… she didn't like it, not one bit.

"Yeah, it was kinda a crazy thing," she finally said. "I never really thought that… it was an option, really." She couldn't hold back a small smile. "But Phineas did, apparently, and I'm sure you know how he - you - always manages to get his way with things in the end."

"So Candace says," Other Phineas replied. "Though I can't say I've ever noticed it specifically."

"Yeeeah," Candace continued. "It was a pretty wild time. I was… not at all ready for - for Jeremy Johnson starting to move into his adult life without me. And I made some, uh, pretty questionable decisions on how to handle that." She grimaced. "You know, a few years ago we ran into each other at the Googolplex. He was… pleasant, because I don't think he possesses the ability to be mad, really. Told me that I almost caused him to have a mental breakdown - you know, question what of what he knew was even real in the first place - and that it took him like two months to be okay again. Which… I hadn't really thought of happening at the time, but it was totally possible. And mortifying, even if he assured me that he didn't have any hard feelings towards me. Which was nice to know, too."

She noticed an odd expression on Other Phineas' face. "What? - Oh, right, you probably have no idea who Jeremy Johnson is anyway. He was like-"

"No, no, I know him," Other Phineas broke in. "I just… that sounds... surprising. I wouldn't have expected… that. You know - from you. No offense, of course."

Candace shrugged. "None taken. It was ages ago. When you combine angsty teenage hormones with the ability to bend the laws of nature to your will, it really is a recipe for disaster."

Whew. This subject reminded her that she really wasn't looking forward to a time when Amanda and Xavier would enter that phase. Of course, there was a possibility that they simply wouldn't, but you never knew. That… could be interesting. She knew that she must've been quite a handful as a teenager.

Sort of like Little Candace One was now, although One still couldn't do the whole 'bending the universe to fit your whims' thing, which really helped in that regard as well.

"Speaking of which," Other Phineas cleared his throat. "I'm reminded of something else I wanted to ask you. Candace told me that you said you'd been out - out there where you didn't exist before?" He paused. "I mean, I've been there once, too, but it was only for like half an hour or so, so I don't really remember much about it. But she said you said you were there for like a week?"

Oh. Well - this was awkward. Candace was sure the way she hesitated said enough about the situation. "That… is true."

Other Phineas nodded. "What happened? I mean - that you had stay that long. I don't remember much from when I was there - it was two decades ago, after all. Still I remember building some sort of catapult thing to launch us out a rift from the inside after we calculated where they would appear."

"Where they would appear?" Candace echoed. "You managed to get out while the Do-Over-Inator was still active? Huh." She snorted to herself. "Lucky you, I guess."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what I remember?" Other Phineas said. "Why? What happened to you?"

"Well, for starters, we sure as heck didn't get any help from naturally occurring rifts - time loop or no time loop. After Phineas and Ferb were sucked up, the loops and rifting - all that stopped."

"Stopped?"

"Yeah, I… never saw the Do-Over-Inator again, actually, but I just sort of assumed somebody turned it off. Vanessa's father, or whoever - I can never remember his name."

"Harold, I think?" Other Phineas offered. "In our dimension, at least. Or something like that."

Candace shrugged. "Whatever. Either way - at that point I knew I was in trouble. Because the time loops had stopped, and Baljeet and Isabella and Buford didn't remember who I was, and I tried to find Vanessa's father again, but he'd skipped town and cleaned out his apartment, so I was pretty much out of luck - and in some real hot water."

Other Phineas seemed confused for a moment. "But… can't you - you can invent stuff like me - and the other me? I mean, I'm watching you right now."

Candace glanced down at the blowtorch in her hand. "Oh. Well, yeah - I can, and could… but at the time I was in this weird time of my life where it sort of faded away behind me being obsessed with trying to get my brothers in trouble with Mom. Which didn't ever work, of course, because the Mysterious Force, but boy how I tried."

An odd expression had crossed Other Phineas' face. "That's… interesting."

"Yeah, it was this weird thing." Candace rolled her eyes. "Guess you probably don't know what I'm rambling on about, but I was pretty… crazy back then. At least, that's what everyone assumed. What Mom assumed for the longest time."

"Harsh," Other Phineas agreed. "So you did that instead of inventing, I guess? I can… sort of see how that works?"

"No one really knows quite how it worked," she replied. "Had something to do with being really, like, over obsessive about it plus the fact that for a large part of it, the withdrawals were staved off by proxy - Phineas and Ferb's proxy. Which did have some… weird effects when their proxy wasn't there, but for the most part it was basically omnipresent."

"Huh. That's… interesting," Other Phineas said. "So I guess if you couldn't (yet?) invent, then it would be kinda hard to get the other me and Ferb back."

"Hard?" She almost laughed. "It was straight-up impossible. I was just an ordinary teenager that pretty much everyone thought was raving lunatic anyway."

"I'm sure it wasn't quite so bad as all that," Other Phineas smiled awkwardly at her. It wasn't so much the smile that was awkward as her confused internal reaction to it, actually. Either way - she could definitely tell that this was another dimension. Other Phineas hadn't been around for those years in the middle, and Candace Four hardly seemed the type to lose her cool in that really embarrassing sort of way. So of course he'd try to be nice, but he couldn't know what went on. Surely.

"Either way," she continued. "I had this idea that maybe I should use the time machine in the museum to go get help - not knowing at the time that it would be even be there still, which of course it was, thanks to quantum locking. So I traveled into the future-"

Suddenly, she stopped. The recollection of that part of the horrific ending of the year twenty-seventeen was not something she liked to think about. Cold shivers ran up her spine as her brain conjured up some of her oldest memories. "I…" she stammered, trying to get around the massive roadblock suddenly appeared in her thought process. Her breaths came short and shallow as the memories of that time came rushing back to the forefront of her mind.

"-Three? Candace?" Phineas' voice sliced through the fog in her brain. "Are you okay?"

"I…" she tried again. "Phineas, I - I need to sit down."

Phineas blinked once, but quickly retrieved a chair from the other end of the room and brought it over. She collapsed into it with a huge sigh, lifting one arm towards him, trying to get him to come and sit with her, as he always did when this sort of thing had happened in the past.

Why was it so bad now, of all times? It was almost never this bad anymore. It must have had something to do with her visit to the non-dimension yesterday, surely. And why, for crying out loud, was Phineas still standing awkwardly in front of her, looking so conflicted? She wanted - needed - him right now, to sit and hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that it was all in the past, that it was not going to happen again, the way he always used to when this used to happen.

...oh.

Right.

Because this wasn't Phineas, no matter how much they resembled each other - and could never be be him, either. This was the Other Phineas, the one who looked like her Phineas, but it simply wasn't the same, nor could it ever be.

And there was also the fact that she was absolutely embarrassing herself in front of him.

With a sudden lurch, she shot up out of the chair and forced the last of the sudden flashback away, back to whatever scary corner of her mind it had hidden itself for the past twenty-one years.

"You alright?" Other Phineas repeated, a look of concern still on his face.

"Yes," Candace swallowed. "I'm - I'm fine." She laughed nervously. "Where - where was I again?"

Other Phineas frowned briefly. "You… said something about traveling into the future?"

"What?" Candace scoffed as best she could. "I… that's - no, that never happened. There was just, uh, a - the talking zebra." She nodded vigorously. "He showed up and it all went downhill from there."

"Uh huh." Other Phineas looked slightly doubtful, but he didn't press the subject. "What exactly do you mean by 'went downhill'?"

She noticed that the random reference to her recurring hallucination - if it was actually that at all, given Kevin's presence here - provoked almost no reaction from Other Phineas that she could see. What did that say, exactly? Something about Candace Four, perhaps? It would certainly be nice to be able to talk to someone who'd had to deal with that insufferable tea-drinking equine the same as she had.

Kevin's presence just made that whole thing really weird, though. Candace still wasn't quite sure what to make of that, honestly, and she didn't really like what it implied.

"Went downhill?" she repeated. "It went from bad - to worse. I jumped, nah, got dumped out from the frying pan and into the fire." She paused. "There was actually this whole thing the zebra and a… I guess you could call it a mental breakdown, if you, uh, wanted to?"

"I… see?" Other Phineas replied slowly.

Candace nodded. "The Theory of Everything - the inventing thing - it was going to come out anyway, because there wasn't any more proxy there for me. Either way, however, it didn't make it any more fun when it finally did come." She shuddered at the memory. "As you might expect, withdrawal set in, practically instantly. It was miserable. I had zero idea how to handle them at that point, and I kept beating myself up with them by accident."

"Ah," Other Phineas blinked. "With...drawal? Yes… I can't say I know what you're talking about?"

Now Candace was surprised. "Oh, waaait," she drawled. "I talked to Four about this, though I didn't quite believe her at the time." She paused. "Do you really mean to tell me that you don't have to deal with this?"

"With 'withdrawal'?" Other Phineas enunciated the word carefully, as if he hadn't had much experience with it. It was almost like he was tasting it as it rolled off his tongue. "I… don't think so?"

Candace rolled her eyes. "Seriously." She thought hard for a moment, then decided to try another tack - after all, given that this was another dimension, maybe they had another name for it or something. That… was possible, right? It had to be. "What about when you don't invent stuff?"

"Don't invent?" he asked back. "Why would I not invent?"

"Just tell me," she pushed. "Have you ever tried to go any significant length of time without inventing?"

"I mean… yeah, I suppose?" He reached up and ran his hand through his hair. "During the school year as kids we'd only do our projects once or twice a week on Saturdays and Sundays. Does that count?"

Five days? A hundred and twenty whole hours? Of course that counted. To go that long without inventing - Candace was pretty sure that it simply wasn't physically possible. "And what happened?" she repeated.

Other Phineas' eyebrows lowered in thought. "I… would get disappointed that we had to wait so long? Maybe a bit cabin-feverish, or something like that."

"And the headaches?" she pressed, unwilling to believe was he was saying. "And the nausea and the vertigo and the shaking and seizure-like convulsions and the vomiting and oh! the migraines?"

Other Phineas shook his head. "Ah… no?" He paused for a moment. "Wait - are you saying that all that happens to you if you don't invent?"

"Not just to me!" Candace exclaimed. "To Phineas. To Ferb. To Amanda and Xavier. It happened to Baljeet once like twenty years ago when Phineas and Ferb artificially induced the Theory of Everything into his head." She shook her head. "It's… kinda like a thing."

"Wow." It was no joke, then? She could tell by Other Phineas facial features that he was telling the truth. "I did not know that was a thing that… was possible? And the other me, too? Huh."

"So let me get this straight," Candace repeated. "You… can do just about whatever you feel like doing, laws of nature and common sense notwithstanding, and yet… you don't have to. It's just… something you do? You could stop - actually, factually stop - whenever you felt like it?" She threw back her head and sighed. "Wow. That's… hardly fair."

It seemed dumb even to herself, but she couldn't quite stifle the hint of jealousy that crept into her heart. 'Hardly fair' was the understatement of the year, that much was for sure. More like - like obnoxiously unfair and entirely unpalatable in the first place. If this was how it worked in this dimension… why couldn't it be the same everywhere? Why did her dimension have to be the one with the horrifyingly painful withdrawal symptoms that inescapably cropped up if she should so much as try to have a normal life?

And Candace Four said she still couldn't do it.

It just wasn't fair. Four had pretty much told her this would be the case back in the non-dimension, but she'd somehow how hoped that Other Phineas had just… not told her, for some reason, similarly to how her own brothers hadn't said anything to her so far back in her childhood - not until she'd run into them herself.

But no, of course, because she was Candace Gertrude Flynn - Candace Three - and she could never catch a break.

"I've gotta say," Other Phineas piped up again. "I'm rather curious about this… thing, now that you've told me about it." He hesitated just for a moment. "Do you know why they happen? Or if - if they can be stopped or cured or whatever?"

"Pfft." Candace snorted. "It's the Theory of Everything. It physically alters the pathways in your brain. Phineas and Ferb and I and Amanda and Xavier… we were born with it. It's not something you can 'remove' or 'fix', because believe me we've looked into it, especially after… after Amanda got into trouble with them for the first time." She paused for a moment. "But there's just no way. Even completely subjugating a person's conscious mind and fully wiping it or otherwise incapable of conscious or subconscious thought can't do the trick. It's like eating or drinking - a physical need that must be satisfied."

"That… is interesting." Other Phineas rubbed the back of his neck. "I… don't really know what to say. Sorry? Is that the right response to something like this?"

Candace just shrugged, doing her best to ignore the envy eating at her insides. "If you wanna be sorry, you can, I guess."

"Uh huh." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I wonder if the same thing does actually happen to me and Ferb but just… takes a longer time to get started or something? Like… it'd have to be at least a week or something, I guess."

"Hardly." Candace scoffed. "Trust me on this one - if they came for you, you'd know."

"I see." He nodded. "Well, that's… very interesting."

"Very interesting," Candace muttered under her breath. "Yeah, for sure."

She wondered what Phineas would say to that. Probably nothing, in all likelihood, because she knew that he wasn't really the type to get jealous over this sort of thing. And she knew that was the better way to be, really she did, but just knowing that certainly didn't seem to help all that much.

She really needed to get away from this subject before it soured her mood to much. "Where was I?" she asked aloud. "Oh, right - the withdrawals. Yeah." She cleared her throat and continued. "Anyway, all that aside, I finally made it through the weird mental block that'd somehow gotten stuck in my brain. And from there…"

She hesitated briefly, unsure of her own memory of such a distant and convoluted time. "I got ahold of a bunch of stuff and built this space-time ripper to get to Phineas and Ferb, but I didn't manage to pull them out - instead, I fell in. And busted my arm all up." She shrugged. "So we were there for like two or three more days, just sort of… stuck until some sort of weird thing happened with a non-pizzazium-powered space-ripper melting down and exploding and weakening the continuum's protective barrier enough for us to slide back in without needed pizzazium - though we were still forced to travel diagonally to quantum energy flow and slide into whatever dimension we hit first. Which was some freaky dimension, but it was a freaky dimension with pizzazium infinionite, and we just went straight home from there."

"That's quite an adventure," Other Phineas replied. "I imagine your parents were quite happy to see you again." He suddenly sat his screwdriver down and reached into his pocket, producing his phone. "Oh, awesome!"

"What is it?"

He fiddled with his phone for a moment, before looking up again. "Ferb's here. Now we can really get started in earnest."

"That's… good." Candace nodded. And it really was. Other Phineas wasn't an unpleasant person at all. In fact he was quite pleasant, and it was only the downright uncanny resemblance to her own Phineas that kept her from being entirely at ease around him. But it could have been worse - they could have ended up in Candace Five's home dimension, after all.

Now, that would have been unfortunate.

"It's also convenient," she hummed under her breath. "I've just finished the calculations we should need for this thing."

She showed the paper to Other Phineas, who read the first line aloud.

"A dozen, a gross, and a score, plus three times the square root of four, divided by seven, plus five times eleven, is nine squared and not a bit more." He shrugged slightly. "Well, it looks good to me, at least. I suppose all that's left is to give it a test run and see what happens."


	12. Alone in the Crowd

After one year of freedom, Candace Johnson was back in the place of her nightmares – Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. And she couldn't decide whether this time was worse than last time.

There were arguments to be had for both sides. On one hand, last time had been the first time she'd learned the horrifying truth that there was a version of herself out there who had sunk so low to commit incest with her own younger brother. She had been all alone here then, unable to talk to anyone who understood her objections. (Although admittedly, that had in part been because she'd honored Phineas' wish not to tell anyone about their shameful secret, and she hadn't really met other people outside of his family either.)

Last time she had also spent much of the week worrying whether this Phineas might be attracted to her, which was a cruel worry to have plaguing her only hours after she'd found out that this was an option at all. This time, she would not have that problem, because Other Dimension Candace – Candace Four – was here. Normal Candace had a friend and ally (even if she glitched and had a rude temperament), she had experience with how this all went down and thus some more certainty that she would make it back home, she had her own body and didn't need to worry about her mind exploding, and most importantly, Other Dimension Phineas had his own sister here to do with whatever nasty things he wanted to do.

That fact, of course, was also the first disadvantage to this time – because she had known last night that in the bedroom above her was a version of her brother sleeping with his sister like husband and wife. And even if she could reassure herself that sheer exhaustion would ensure they wouldn't get up to much that night, the idea that it was a possibility, certainly if she spent a few days here, was terrifying. Candace Five had already resolved not to go back to the Flynn house no matter how long it took. She'd stay over here, which was slightly worse than being in her home dimension when whatever went down at the Flynn home went down, but it was the most she could do.

Then, of course, there was the disadvantage that all this had happened again , despite Phineas' reassurances to the contrary. Worse, she had to stay with no less than seven other versions of herself, each one of them crazier than the other. And perhaps that was the most disturbing thing of all – they were all weird. She couldn't blame Seven for her glitching because that was apparently something her brothers had inflicted on her (and Five had been honestly surprised that any version of Phineas and Ferb could be that cruel, but from what little she had grasped of the woman's story it did sound like they were the ones at fault) but every other version of her except for the child was strange in some way.

And none of them were married to Jeremy – again, not something that was One or Seven's fault – but instead, no less than three of them, including the one she'd met before (and having to put up with her all week was yet another disadvantage of this time) were in a relationship with Phineas. And one of them, that deceitful traitor , was even married to him (how in the world did that even work). At least last time Candace had had the solace (even if she hadn't seen it like that at the time) of believing that she happened to have landed in the craziest world out there. But now she knew that being with Phineas was a pattern .

So what did that say about the person they all were deep down – what did that say about Candace Gertrude Flynn?

The answer was too terrifying to contemplate.

Yes, both last time and this time were awful experiences. And perhaps that was the worst thing of all – at least last time she'd been stranded here had been an accident that, as both her own brother and this Phineas had said to her, wouldn't happen again. This time, though? No one seemed to know how it had happened or even have an idea (except for that deranged Candace Two, because of her obsession with Vanessa's father) which meant that it could just as easily happen again. And again. And again.

Maybe Seven was right. Maybe she would have been much better off if she'd just had different brothers. It would have been a much less crazy life, that was for sure. Of course, given that her own brothers weren't at fault for this anyway, having grown up without siblings would have just left her less prepared for the craziness both of these rides through inter dimensional space had caused. And… well, missing Phineas and Ferb forever? Despite all of their antics, Candace knew she didn't want that . She did care for her brothers, even if they - and particularly their interdimensional counterparts, apparently - could be… frustrating sometimes.

Very, very frustrating.

"So" Seven asked, as they exited the elevator. "What is this place exactly?"

"It's the third floor" Five replied. "And no, I don't know what they do here. I told you, I mostly stuck to the basement last time."

Seven snorted. "Spending entire days cooped up in the same room with Phineas – and one of whom you knew that he'd already managed to seducehis own sister. No wonder you don't want to relive the experience. I don't know how you lasted that long in the first place."

"Beats me," Five said, shaking her head "For what it's worth, he tried to be decent to me."

Seven shook her head. "That's the first trap you'll want to avoid at all costs. He appears polite. Friendly, even. His enthusiasm has invigorated many people who should really know better – heck, when I was a teen I didn't even always see through it. But that's just because he and Ferb know that's how they can make you suffer more later." She looked around and pointed to the sign next to the elevator. "I mean, look at this. Apparently, this floor has two routes you can use to get to the other side. One is the 'efficient route', and the other is the 'fun route'. Except it's not a fun route." Her piercing eyes glared at Five, although the effect was diminished slightly when she briefly disappeared halfway through. "It's a death trap , Five. And a real one, not like the ones Two keeps yammering on about."

Five frowned. "So what about everyone who works here?"

"I would presume they know which route to take – of course, anyone who chooses to work here in the first place is probably as crazy as they are anyway." Seven walked over to the nearest hallway, motioning for her to follow. "Come on. Let's take a look what kind of nut jobs hang around here."

Although Five was beginning to have serious doubts about Seven's sanity right now – well, that wasn't fair , the woman was just a little frazzled, and Five knew well how being around Phineas and Ferb (especially when her brother pulled the crazy antics with his sister that he did here) could tire one out – she went on to follow her into the hallway, which gave way to a large office room. (For some reason, this entire building seemed a lotbigger on the inside than it had looked on the outside.) Seven stomped over to the nearest computer and the clerk who was typing away behind it. "You there! What are you doing right now?"

"Miss Flynn?" the clerk replied. He couldn't possibly be older than twenty-five – well, Five supposed that that would fit with her local brothers' immaturity, given that they still hadn't gotten over their inventing phase. "Wait, there's two of you? I… I didn't know you had a twin sister."

"Answer the question, kid" Seven said, folding her arms. "What are my brothers making you do?"

In response, the intimidated clerk just pointed at the computer screen, which was filled with numbers. "Well, as you might know, I'm with the communication department on matters related to Phinesports and Ferbletics," he said. "Just this morning I've answered a couple of complaints – and compliments – about our latest versions of the Pyramid Sport Stabilizers, Teen Edition. And this afternoon I'm supposed to be in a video conference with some of our Asian holdings about extending the sales of our giant Ferb-bowling balls to China. Finally, there's been the difficulty some of our scientists on the east coast have been having with replicating hockey z-9, football x-7 and tennis w-6 – they've been pressing for the founders to come over and help them. Oh, and speaking of hockey, a couple of complaints have come in about the latest self-hitting hockey sticks. Some kids say it takes the fun out of the game, and that is not a complaint your brothers would want us to take lightly."

Seven took a step back in disgust and scoffed. "Didn't I tell you, Five? Didn't I tell you? They're still the same immature fools as always. And now they're contaminating the whole world with their 'fun'. How many kids have suffered from this? Because I know they'll have suffered from the fact that they might have tried to do what our brothers did, but that they just weren't as protected by the universe against the inevitable disasters that would follow."

"Ma'am, I can assure you the accident rate with all Phinesports and Ferbletics is incredibly low," the clerk said nervously. "The standard helmets, as offered in the standard package with almost any sport, provide basic protection, we have an immense test team which tests every new invention your brothers come up with, and an extensive manual with rules and guidelines is standard. With all due respect, miss Flynn, but didn't you yourself insist on that when this company was founded?"

"We… we are not the Candace Flynn you're familiar with" Five spoke up. "Neither of us is. We…" She wanted to tell him the truth rather than going along with the locals just covering everything up (because even they knew that these were signs of immaturity and perverseness), but she also knew that at this stage that would require far more explaining than she was willing to do. Not to mention the fact that it could well end up distracting Phineas from the difficult task of getting them home. (And the last thing she wanted was for Three to get to reign alone over that laboratory – at least that was something she could agree on with Two.) "We're her cousins." Seven gave her a look, but Five ignored her for now. "How long have you been working here?"

"Since I graduated high school" the clerk replied. "I've always wanted to work at your cousins' company, from since I was just a boy. I… I know this must sound like silly flattery, but I really do admire what they've done for Danville, and for the world."

"It does sound like silly flattery," Five informed him. "Come on, Seven, we're going." It… it just felt wrong. To see her brothers be admired like that in a world in which Phineas was in a relationship with his own sister… and no one knew. No one suspected. Somewhere inside her, Candace Five wondered whether telling these employees the truth would even make a difference.

Why ? Why was Phineas Flynn, who was an adult by now, still so determined to do all that crazy immature stuff that he really should have left behind when he grew up?

And worse, why did part of her still resent him for being able to do all that in the first place – why did part of her admire the company he had built?

It was ridiculous, of course. There was absolutely nothing admirable about this. It was like Seven had said. Dangerous. Everything was dangerous. There was no way they could actually break the laws of physics like this and keep everyone around them from suffering the accidents that naturally went along with it. After all, she knew how much she herself had suffered when she was younger while she had been trying so hard to keep everyone safe. These inventions could therefore only be even more dangerous, even when they didn't look dangerous on the outside… and yet a fully-grown Phineas and Ferb had still decided to distribute them all over the world. And Candace Four should have known all about those dangers, and she should have known better than to accept it and condone it. But of course, Candace Four had never displayed a particularly high amount of common sense in the first place.

There was, of course, another option. Because as the sports clerk had just mentioned, apparently Phineas and Ferb's inventions did have a low accident rate. And if that was true… if everyone around this world was actually using all these impossible things without suffering the consequences… when she'd done nothing but suffer from them when she had been young…

…well, that just wasn't fair .

She hadn't realized that she'd spoken that last sentence out-loud, but Seven scoffed (again. Really, it was like scoffing was her default mode or something.) "That's what I told you, didn't I?" she said. "It's never them who get hurt by their inventions. They wouldn't build them if they were in any danger, but the Mysterious Force is always there to protect them. The only ones who suffer are people like us – the innocent ones. We have a duty to save Danville from them, Five. The moment Phineas and Ferb are done with building whatever they are constructing that will be able to help us get home, I'm going to the police station and turning Phineas in for incest. I'm sure that when that investigation starts, everything else will come out too." The woman gave her a slightly frightening grin. "Those two are finally going to go down ."

Five frowned. "Are you sure that's, well, you know, fair? I mean, they are putting us up here right now, and helping us get home… and some of the things that clerk mentioned… obviously they're stupid and irresponsible, but some of them sound like they could be, well, fun. Useful."

Seven's eyes widened and she shook her head. "Useful? Useful ? Name any one of our brothers' inventions that has ever caused anything but pain and misery! Yes, some of them could provide fun – but only for them, and for the people they corrupt into their blatant irresponsibility. An entire generation is going to grow up here without ever being confronted with the facts of real life, because Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher are allowing them to break through the realms of the impossible – and then the impossible will snap back, like it always does, and they'll realize what they've done. And then they'll hate our brothers for what they've caused, but it'll be too late. And don't even start about fairness when the only reason those two are pretending to help us is to get rid of us. They know we threaten their hold on Four, they know we threaten their lavish lifestyles. And you know what? That's the one thing in which they are right."

That was… an interesting thought, and one that hadn't occurred to Five yet. Yeah, Phineas and Ferb marketing all these impossible things was going to backfire on them one day, and it was likely to provoke a huge backlash. If they acted now – cut it off at the root – wasn't that like, kind of protecting their brothers from themselves? Phineas and Ferb wouldn't appreciate it, that was for sure, but she knew that sometimes you had to do things for the greater good that other people didn't get or appreciate right away. It was just part of being Candace Flynn.

"You're… you have a point, probably," she replied. "I mean, I did manage to stop my Phineas – my brother Phineas – from inventing when he was a teenager, and he is leading a much more stable life than he used to. Four managed to talk him into rebuilding some of his old inventions, though. Maybe I… I should have probably stamped that out harder." She didn't mention the fact that she'd been privately relieved that her brother was willing to prepare himself in case something like this happened again. Sure, he or another version of himself was likely to be the cause of it anyway, but she still wanted him to be ready to remedy it… even if that meant using inventions. "My psychiatrist says that I still shouldn't have attempted to bust them all the time back in the day, though. Because even if Phineas might not have noticed it at the time, it had a subconscious effect on how he felt about me."

Seven snorted. "If Phineas had any feelings about us – and I mean real ones, not the perverted infatuation with which he managed to ensnare Four and Three and Six – he would have listened to you earlier and stopped inventing when he was just a kid, and you would never have needed to even try to bust him. You have nothing to feel guilty about, Five."

"I guess you're right" Five said softly. "I mean, Four did say that I should have made more of an effort to stay close with him, but what does Four know, right? I mean, she also told me my relationship with Jeremy was unhealthy, so I think that says enough about her."

"Four is a nitwit" Seven agreed, which was the first thing she'd said until now which Five could wholeheartedly nod along with – and that thought was kind of disturbing, but she didn't dwell on it. "I remember being with Jeremy, all those years ago. He was sweet and caring and perfect, and our relationship was a million times better than whatever it would be like to be with our creepy little brother." She stopped walking for a moment, and although Five at first wondered whether there was something she'd seen or whether she was suffering from something physical (she had no idea what it was like to be a time anomaly and whether that would have any kind of effect on your health) the fond and pained expression in Seven's eyes told her otherwise. "I… I still miss him, you know?" she continued, her voice cracking a little. "I didn't have any forewarning. One moment, I was walking with Mom and Amanda, my mother and my daughter with Jeremy, and the next… gone. It was all gone. He barely even knew me anymore, Candace." She looked over at Five, a tear in her left eye – honestly, Five was kind of surprised that someone of Seven's somber disposition was even capable of showing emotions other than anger. "What is it like, Candace? To live with him? To still have… that perfect life?"

"Well, Jeremy is… good to me, I suppose," Five replied, feeling a little like she was put on the spot – and the intensity with which Seven was looking at her didn't help any. "He's kind and understanding, even after all the times I acted up in front of him or the kids. I'm trying to be better, it's just… not helping. And there are some things that I can't tell Dr. Baumer – he's my doctor – so I have to solve them on my own. But overall, everything is going all right. Would you believe that Four actually had the audacity to tell me that because I see a psychiatrist, my life was the one which was messed up more than hers is?" She snorted. "At least I admit that I have issues and need to confront them. I don't see her doing that. Oh wait – she probably goes to her brother instead. Right, because that's healthy."

"And Phineas probably just fills her head with lies anyway," Seven chimed in. "I wonder how he managed to corrupt her in the first place? I can't imagine any version of me falling for his lies – but I'll admit that I was naïve to some of his faults when I was younger. Heck, just before I realized he'd managed to erase me from existence, I had been about to give up on busting him altogether."

"Well, it's not like we could really spend all our times in the present day running over to Phineas' house and checking whether he's doing the things he shouldn't be doing" Five replied. Sensing that this wasn't a topic which Seven was likely to respond well to, she quickly switched tracks. "So, did you ever discover what happened to the version of you who replaced you? What her life – and her relationship with her brothers – was like?"

Seven shrugged. "After Phineas offered me his special branch of pity – more like contempt – I figured that I wasn't going to stick around him or his family for a second longer" she replied. "I high-tailed it out of Danville. The one thing I did discover was that my other self wasn't actually married to Jeremy, for whatever reason. She was listed in the phone book, but as Candace Flynn , not Johnson, even though I'd seen her come home with two kids. I figured that maybe she was babysitting, or something."

A feeling of unease crept up Five's back. Sure, the dimension Seven originated from could be anyone's, and the babysitting explanation was a valid one… but there had been far too many coincidences in her life for her to be satisfied with that explanation. And given just how negative all the news she had come across over the past day or two had been... "Do you remember what those kids looked like?" she pressed. "Did they look like Flynns?"

"I… don't know, actually" Seven said, frowning. "It's been a long time, and it was difficult to tell from a distance. I think they both had red hair, though. Reddish or orange. Why?"

Five hesitated before saying what she knew she would have to say next. She'd seen that Seven had a bit of a temper, and though it wasn't on Two's level it was still something she wanted to be careful around. "Well, I was just thinking… what other relationship do we know that versions of ourselves entered into, that isn't with Jeremy, and that would be sure to produce children with red or orange hair?"

For a moment, it was clear that Candace Seven genuinely didn't get it. Then Five saw the recognition dawn on her eyes, only for it to be replaced with white-hot fury a second later. Seven all but slammed her against the wall and glared fiercely at her. "Are you suggesting," she hissed, "that a version of us that was once **me** could possibly be out there committing incest with our brother ?!"

"I… it was just a thought!" Five exclaimed, trying very hard not to panic. "I didn't want to offend you, but… well, we don't know that it isn't true, do we? It… well, I know Four and I have some chilling similarities in our background history, so it… well, I don't want to say it's true , but it's not impossible ."

Seven let go of her, allowing Five to regain some of her composure and prepare to defend herself against any further attacks – but none came. Instead, Seven just stared numbly into thin air, mumbling incoherent word strings to herself. In any other circumstances, Candace Five would have probably lost patience with her counterpart and abandoned her there. Right now, she didn't do that. She knew how hard this reveal would have to have hit her other self, and the only thing she could do was to stick around and help her through it.

Finally, Seven appeared to recover. The arms that she'd still held up in an awkward position lowered, and she blinked a few times. (She had also glitched at least once during the time in which she was staring ahead, but apparently that was enough of a non-issue by now that it hadn't disturbed her reverie at all.) The next moment, the incoherent look in her eyes was replaced by determination and she suddenly stalked forwards, in the direction of the elevator.

"Wait a second – where are you going!" Five complained, especially as she got to the elevator and noticed that her other self had pressed the button that would allow her to go downstairs. "I thought we'd agreed to stay away from the basement!"

"If possible, yes" Seven replied, clearly still having some difficulty to find her voice. "But it's no longer possible now. I need to know this. I'm sure Phineas can jury-rig up some kind of device that will allow us to compare my presence here with that of our beloved other selves and see whether any of us are from the same dimension."

Five nodded. "I see" she murmured. "Do you have any idea which of the two it would be? Three or Four?" Those really were the only options, weren't they – she knew no temporal anomaly had ever been created in her world (and even if she'd missed out on seeing it when it happened, it was something Phineas would no doubt have told her over the past year) and in any case, she was still with Jeremy Johnson. One, Two and Six were all out for obvious reasons as well, as was Kevin, so the two creepy incestuous realities were really the only options here. Or, as Seven no doubt hoped and they had presumed until now, some different dimension – but that wasn't necessarily the case. Not anymore.

Seven shrugged. "I would think it would be Four, considering that Three is the one who thinks she can build the same crazy things our brothers build, and I know I've never had those delusions in my world. But then again, none of the features of either reality fit my world, so it's really impossible to tell."

Five nodded again, and she impulsively gave her other self a pat on the shoulder. Seven gave her a look, so she instantly backed away again and decided to change the subject to avoid further awkwardness. "So… what's wrong with this elevator?"

The two Candaces stared at the elevator, which still hadn't showed any indication of opening up. Five took a closer look at the panel at the top which was supposed to indicate which floor the elevator was currently on, but it just remained on '12'. It had been over half a minute, too. Either it was lunchtime and the entire staff on the top floor was trying to fit into the same elevator and holding it up for everyone else, or this machine was seriously busted.

"Is something wrong with the elevator?" a young female voice came from behind them. Candace Five turned around to recognize the secretary Two had intimidated earlier, holding a handful of files in her hand. "Let me check. It's often just a brief malfunction because the chiefs have seen fit to add all kinds of bells and whistles to the elevator that can hamper the travel function until all the bugs get worked out, but if you just know what buttons to press you can rush it along." She walked over to the control panel and took out a small gadget. But whatever aiming it at the elevator was supposed to achieve, nothing happened. The floor panel just remained stuck at '12'.

"Figures" Seven muttered, rolling her eyes. "It's something mundane and practical that Phineas and Ferb had to build – no wonder it doesn't work. I suppose we should be relieved that it broke down while we weren't in it."

Phineas' secretary frowned. "You're accusing Phi – Mr. Flynn of this? Oh, please. If you knew your relatives at all, you wouldn't say that. Mr. Flynn is an amazing boss and a creative genius. And even if mundane things aren't his specialty, he always manages to fix them in the end. Besides, mundane is boring anyway."

"That's an unusual thing to say for an office secretary" Five remarked.

The young woman shrugged. "That might be true, but even office secretaries have a life outside of the office, and even in the part of it that happens inside the office I don't mind a little excitement. Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated offers that in spades, and when it doesn't… well, I can create some." There was a strange smile on her face. "No matter what Mr. Flynn does , exactly, work is always interesting when he's around."

Seven stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending, and then suddenly she recoiled from the secretary. "You… you've got a thing for him, haven't you?" she muttered. "Ugh, it was bad enough hearing how great Phineas is from his sister – I don't want to hear it from anyone else here, too. I'm taking the stairs. You coming, Five?"

"I…" Candace Five hesitated, feeling reluctant to move on. Although she agreed that the idea of a random young woman who was probably about ten years Phineas' junior expressing a crush on him was weird, it was obviously miles better than hearing about the relationship that existed between Phineas and her other selves. Annoying, yes, but not yet a reason to walk all the way down the stairs for.

"Forget it" Seven said, her tone of voice disdainful – that difficult past she'd had really had to have had a profound effect on her, if this was the way she acted even around sane Candaces like Five herself. "I'll see you later, then." She walked off, and a few seconds later the door of the stairway slammed shut behind her.

"Does your… twin sister not get along with Phineas?" the secretary guessed, snapping Candace Five out of her reverie. "Is that why I've never heard of your existence before, miss… Faye, I think she called you?"

"That might be it, yes" Candace replied, absent-mindedly pressing the knob to take the elevator downwards before turning back towards her companion and holding out her hand. "And… yes. I'm Faye Flynn. Was Se- Sa, Sandra right? Do you really have a crush on our cousin?"

The woman in front of her blushed, but she recovered remarkably quickly and gave her a proud look as she shook the offered hand. "Yes, yes I do. Look, I happen to think that your cousin is an amazing man. He's brilliant and creative and beloved by all, and I just don't think it's fair to him that he has no one to share that with. And yes, I do think I would be a perfect fit for that position. Kirsty Huntington, at your service."

Candace shook her head, amazed at the young woman's straight-forwardness. "And why exactly should you succeed where others have failed?" she replied, wondering whether it would be particularly cruel to snap the rug out from under Kirsty by telling her about the creepy infatuation her crush harbored for his sister. "After all, Isabella – that's Ferb's wife – used to have a crush on him for years, but nothing ever came of it." Which was still something Candace couldn't really wrap her head around, considering Isabella's determination. "And then you'll have to deal with his incredible obliviousness, too."

Kirsty shrugged. "Yeah, I heard about that" she said. "But that was a long time ago. Sure, Phineas is oblivious, but if I put the pressure on just the right spots I know I can find his weaknesses and lure him in. He's older now, and I think he's ready for this. And I know that since Mrs. Fletcher a lot of other girls have tried and failed, but none of them were as persistent as I was. None of them loved him like I do. In my own home town, I've got plenty of guys swooning before me – why should Phineas Flynn be any different in the end?"

Candace Five chuckled. "You know, I like you, Kirsty." She did. She really did. Kirsty reminded her a lot of Isabella – or the Isabella from her own world, at least – and she was fairly sure that Isabella was the right fit for Phineas. Now, Isabella might have ended up with Ferb here (somehow) but Kirsty would be a good second best choice. "You're determined, charming, and I'm sure that in time you can win over my br-cousin. But it would be helpful if you could get someone on the inside of the family to help you figure out what makes him tick, and to show you how to win him over."

The twenty-something-year-old nodded, frowning. "I know" she muttered. "I've tried to do that by befriending Mr. Fletcher, but he always just smiles in that enigmatic way of his and gently but unmistakably gestures for me to get back to work. I've even approached his wife for some tricks and tips from the old days, but she alternates between saying that it's too painful to talk about, and straight-up telling me that she doesn't want to have me as a sister-in-law. I don't understand what she has against me – I mean, I could understand it if she was still sore over the fact that she was never successful in wooing him, but she's got Ferb now and they look as happy as any married couple can be, so I don't think that could be it. And don't get me started about his sister." Kirsty sighed. "I don't want to talk badly about your family, Faye… but I tried to befriend Candace Flynn when I first got here, because she lives with Phineas and she's obviously one of the most important people in his life, if not the most important person – I mean, I've seen how fond he is of her kids. But Candace never liked me. She scowls at me, and by now I sometimes scowl back because I know she's deliberately keeping him away from me. I can just tell that she's doing that. And of course I try to remain polite to her, because that's what I should do, but it just gets so hard when she's hanging around her brother like some kind of overprotective sheepdog."

"All right, all right" Five replied, feeling a little awkward at Kirsty's overly detailed description of the way Four behaved around her younger brother. "Now about…"

"And I could get it if she ever told me what she found so objectionable about me, but she never does!" Kirsty snapped. "I even once asked her, straight-out, but she wouldn't give me a clear answer. She just asked me whether I wasn't a little young to pursue her brother – well, no! I'm not too young, and I'm not some kind of gold digger either! Sure, I'll admit that it would be nice to have access to all of Phineas Flynn's wealth, but that's not the only reason I want to be his girlfriend – his wife, even. Your cousin is brilliant and sweet and one of the handsomest men I've ever met, and I'd say that even if he hadn't gotten so wealthy off it. I would be happy if our entire honeymoon just consisted out of him talking about science and its practical applications in that enthusiastic voice of his. I really have to go back to work now, but before the end of the day I could show you his latest designs in his office on the top floor. They're amazing. He's amazing."

Candace Five was getting more and more uncomfortable, but she knew that this was something she'd have to sit through if she was to be able to… well, use this. She could use Kirsty to get Phineas Four away from his sister. And if that were to succeed, she could live with a few moments of discomfort.

"You do realize that his head is a triangle?" she said, teasing but also tentative.

Kirsty passed the test with flying colors – she practically swooned. "I know. It's so acute."

Bingo.

Candace Five faked a grin and slapped the girl on the shoulders. "You've convinced me, Kirsty. You would be a good match for Phineas. It will obviously take some time to get him to realize that, but I'll try to help you in any way that I can."

There was enthusiasm in Kirsty's eyes, although it was obviously tempered by the 'knowledge' that 'Faye' was merely Phineas' cousin and therefore far less able to provide meaningful help than Candace, Ferb or Isabella would have been. Ha! If only she knew how useful having Five as an ally was going to be.

"Thanks" she replied. "Thank you so much – I…" She shook her head and rallied herself. "I'm sorry, but I have to go back to work now. It'll look really suspicious if I don't finish sending out these e-mails by the end of the day. I'll see you later, then?"

Five nodded. "That's a promise."

Kathy smiled and skipped ahead of her, practically bouncing down the stairs with excitement at the fact that she'd found someone who could be of use to her. Five watched her go with some amusement. Kirsty had no idea how useful she could end up being to Five's own goals.

Yes, Candace Five considered as she headed down the stairs, Kirsty Huntington could be useful. For her, as well as for Phineas himself – because once she had managed to open his eyes to the possibility that someone else who wasn't his sister had feelings for him, he would finally understand how crazy he had been the entire time. He would finally be able to lead a real love life, rather than the bizarre co-existence with his sister that had somehow happened to him and which he'd allowed himself to believe was real. So basically, she was going to be doing Phineas a favor.

The speech that Local Phineas had given to her in the bowling alley last year suddenly re-occurred to her, and it made her stop on the stairs just before she reached the basement. Because no matter how uncomfortable it made her, Phineas Four had straight-up told her he was in love with his sister, and she'd believed him. Sure, under the circumstances and her own guilt for making such a scene she hadn't been able to do anything else, but there had been something real in her brother's eyes that she wasn't able to ignore. Her brother's attraction to Candace Four, no matter how creepy or wrong it might be, was real. And her trying to come between that with Kirsty was going to hurt him one way or another.

And even if she was prepared to ignore that in saying that it was for his own good, then there was still Candace Four. Who would not want to let go of Phineas without a fight, Five knew that. And who, if any of the things Kirsty had said about what the interactions between her and Four had been like so far were true, would not at all be pleased about finding out what Five had just done to her and to her love life.

And then, of course, there would be the kids. Xavier and Amanda. It was, of course, creepy to the max that Xavier Flynn was her counterpart's son with Phineas' looks… but she couldn't really do that to either of the kids, could she? Break up their parents, their biological parents, the parents whom they had been born to and who had raised them… just like that?

Candace Five shook her head. This wasn't easy. Maybe it wasn't even right, and in that case, she should really go back up there and tell Kirsty that she wasn't going to help her. But she didn't do that either.

Because even if nothing came from this brief encouragement of Kirsty's crush on her other self's brother, Candace Five knew that at least she would have given a statement. She would have resisted the impossible relationships that so many around her seemed to tolerate or worse, to encourage. And even if she could pry Phineas Flynn away from his sister for only a few moments, it would be enough to give her the proof she'd been looking for – that she was right about what their romantic relationships should be like and could be like, and that Four, petty, deranged, vindictive and oh-so-overconfident Candace Four, was wrong .

And by this point in time, that was the one thing she'd sacrifice everything for.

* * *

This was so… different. Candace Six couldn't quite say whether it was anything more than that. If she started a list with all the things on it that she'd never seen before, then she could quite likely have easily gotten together a list big enough to crash the entire Holonet.

She'd been on many planets in her lifetime so far, and they were all different from each other, of course. There was almost no two planets in the galaxy that were exactly the same. And even though she'd been all over the galaxy herself, from Amaltanna to Zygerria, she'd never ceased to be surprised by the brand new and unique ones.

There really were infinite places to go, weren't there? And this planet was no different in that regard, of course. But the fact that the other copies or duplicates or clones or whatever they were of herself insisted that was not merely another planet, but another universe altogether? Just… wow.

Phineas had always insisted that the universe was infinite. How could she have gone beyond infinity? Wasn't that impossible? Maybe it'd been achieved with some trickery of Darthenshmirtz's. The Candace who'd been called Two - the one who wore glareshades everywhere (even in the dark, if you could believe it) - still insisted that he'd done something to cause this. Maybe she was right? It… well, Candace couldn't rule it out completely, but she hardly felt confident in such a theory.

The theory was strange in and of itself, given that she'd never really noticed Darthenshmirtz all that much herself, except from what scattered details Perry had told her every now and them. She had some distant memories of him herself, from back when she was still on the Death Star as just a teenager. He'd… never seem particularly threatening, even then. He was the lowest of the Darths, after all, and often ended up as a laughingstock, even among the Stormtroopers, due to his apparent… well, absentmindedness was a way to put it nicely.

But he had apparently been the one to design the Death Star in the first place, according to Perry. So maybe there was slightly more truth to Candace Two's rambling than first appeared?

Still, Candace Two could certainly use a lesson or two on how to chill out. Candace Six herself could definitely relate to being under all that stress all the time, for sure. It hadn't been easy to learn to sort of… just roll with things, but she'd managed. Of course, with Phineas around, it hadn't been particularly hard either. There was probably no one in the entire galaxy quite so… lighthearted and buoyant as he. Sometimes Candace wondered how she'd ever been so lucky as to find him the first place - or have him find her, really.

She didn't have much good luck in her life, as a rule, but that one incident on the soon-to-be doomed battlestation had already more than made up for all the bad luck she'd ever had and could ever have in the future.

Speaking of 'rolling with it', she couldn't quite believe herself when she saw the transporters on this planet, either.

Groundcars! All of them! It was really quite quaint, if she did say so herself. You'd expect a few of them, of course, but this was more than a few. It was literally all of them. Not a single repulsorcraft anywhere in sight.

The other Ferb was quiet as he sat at the control for the groundcar, steering them deftly along like he was long accustomed to it. Which he may well have been, for all she knew. It did seem like repulsorlift technology was… nowhere. Nowhere at all, as far as she could manage to see.

"So." Candace… Four, yes, Four, turned around in her seat up front to face them all squeezed into the back part. "We're heading to Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. It's… kinda a big place, bigger on the inside than it looks to be on the outside, so…" she grimaced slightly, as if unsure how to phrase her words. "Don't get lost? It may be best if you don't wander away from Ferb or me."

"I'm not gonna get lost ," little Candace One griped, crossing her arms. "I'm fifteen, you know. I've flown a bicycle into outer space, practically. I think I can handle a wandering around alone in some stupid office building, thank you very much."

"A 'bicycle'?" Candace asked. "I would ask you if you were talking about a speeder bike, but those can't actually get very high off the ground. Is it some kind of spaceship?"

Wait, maybe One's brothers had done it. If anyone could turn something as ordinary and mundane as speeder bike into the admittedly epic-sounding 'bicycle' that the little girl had ridden into outer space, then it would have to be Phineas and Ferb.

"Not hardly," One snorted. "If it had been, maybe it wouldn't have been quite so terrifying. I don't even know why I did that in the first place. I mean, I do , but-" her voice trailed off and she huffed dramatically. "It means nothing abnormal. Nothing at all, and I don't care what she or anyone else in this place says."

"A bicycle's like, uh," Four seemed hung up on how to explain it. "It has two wheels and a seat and you move it by pedaling." She paused again. "No, they're not supposed to fly. Anywhere, really, much less into outer space."

"Look, a bicycle - and cyclist." Ferb spoke up briefly, pointing out the windshield.

Candace leaned forwards, trying to see. For some reason, no one else in the groundcar seemed particularly interested, but that wasn't about to stop her. Which was really just another way that Phineas had rubbed off on her, really. She so often thought that she just didn't deserve him. It was simply the greatest thing in her life. He was, and their children and just… it was beyond words.

When she did finally crane her neck far enough to actually this rumored spacefaring vehicle, however, she was immediately disappointed. It wasn't a spacecraft at all!

Instead, she watching in a combination of disbelief and confusion and amusement as some person straddling a tiny metal frame attached to two wheels pumped their legs furiously, turning the wheels and making the contraption move. Hardly an impressive spaceship.

Hardly even a buspod or a speeder bike, even. The thing looked… it was just awkward and cumbersome looking.

Still, she watched intently until the person riding it turned off onto a side street and disappeared from view. Because it was a person, a human, more specifically. Had she mentioned how weird it was that there only humans here? Like, it was hardly the weirdest thing, but to look everywhere and not see a single nonhuman was… rather odd in its own right. Just another reminder that she was far, far away from home. As if she needed anymore of those.

Kevin had said that on her planet, they had a similarly mixed-species society, so that was nice. Though she'd also said that they didn't meat? Which was also strange. Humans weren't a vegetarian species, obviously. Well, except on where Kevin was from, apparently.

Once again, totally not the weirdest thing. She could deal with it. Phineas was never going to believe this story when she finally got the chance to tell it to him. Actually, he probably would, if she seriously told him that it was true.

For a split second, Candace wondered if this was all a dream and she might suddenly wake up back in bed again with her husband by her side. It was certainly crazy enough to have been a fevered dream - as if she'd somehow caught the Tastiged Flu or something.

But despite those thoughts, she knew that this was no dream. Which… didn't help much to resolve the situation, certainly. What it did mean that this was real - that she really had somehow been torn out of her bed and dumped into what was ostensibly a new universe entirely. How it had worked, she didn't know.

But at least Candace Four's brother was here. And if anyone could fix this problem, it would be Phineas, for sure. She wondered whether or not her husband's missing persons device would be able to find her while she was here. Its function was based in part on the Force, right?

Candace had seen the bumper sticker many times. " The Force an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together. "

Only… if she was in another galaxy - another universe - entirely, did the Force, well, was it even here at all? There were living things here, obviously. But it was also an entirely different galaxy, and although the idea of the Force being absent was strange, it was still one that she couldn't rule out altogether. It was definitely quite the conundrum.

She couldn't tell the answer, of course, not being sensitive herself. But Ferb was, right? He was at home, and she still hadn't gotten a straight answer out of the version of her step-brother from this universe about it either.

She was just about to speak up and ask him again, when he turned the groundcar off the main thoroughfare and into what appeared to be a space for parking groundcars.

"Alright," Candace Four spoke up from the front seat. "We're here."

Candace completely forgot about her question for a second as she opened the groundcar door and looked around, absorbing the new and unfamiliar scenery.

Odd looking buildings stood all around, jutting up from the ground and reaching various heights into the sky, though none of them really that tall. The tallest building around - not that that was saying much - was also the closest. As Candace tried to think whether she'd seen any architecture similar to this before, her eyes slowly followed the walls of the building up, up, and up, until she saw a huge billboard mounted atop the very top, sporting pictures of Phineas and Ferb, followed by a scrawl of some strange-looking scribbles.

"Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated," Kevin read. "Established 2017."

"What's 'two thousand and seventeen'?" Candace asked aloud. "I mean, established I get, but what's with the number?"

Candace Four looked at her weirdly, cocking one eyebrow. "It's a…" she paused. "You know the date, Six?"

"Say what?" The question caught her rather off guard. "Twenty-two ABY? Why?"

Candace glanced over at her brother, and an almost palpable look passed between them.

"2017?" little Candace One echoed. "That's the same year number that was in that book Two and I found back in the non-dimension." She shook her head.

"What book?" Kevin asked.

"Some, like, guest book thingy. It was signed a bunch of times over by-" One paused awkwardly. "-by Phineas and Ferb. And also by one Candace. All dated at the end of 2017."

"2017 ABY? Or BBY?" Candace Six wasn't quite sure how exactly this random number was supposed to keep years in order. What had happened two thousand and seventeen years ago to define an entire calendar to the extent that nothing that had happened since then had been enough reason to update it? Maybe this was just a very boring planet on which very little happened.

"Dated at the end of 2017?" Candace Four frowned. "That's… odd. I wonder which one of us it was? If one of us at all."

"Well, just like I told Two, it wasn't me." One shrugged and crossed her arms. "I hadn't even been born then."

For some reason, that seemed to provoke a reaction out of Four and Four's Ferb. "Weren't born?" Four replied. "I mean… I guess that makes sense, but…" she paused for a second and looked to be concentrating hard on something. "So… you were born in… 2023?"

One looked slightly miffed for some reason. "Yes? I've told you many times now that I am fifteen - and I wish you'd treat me like it, too."

"So it's the year number 2017?" Six echoed, still not quite getting this apparently quite different system of dates that was used in this universe.

Kevin shook her head. "2038. 2017 was twenty-one years ago."

"Ah." Six thought hard for a moment, trying to piece everything together. "So, the year 2038 is the same thing as 22 ABY. That's… interesting, I suppose." She wasn't sure what she could ever do with that kind of information, but like one of her old friends always used to say, never pass up a chance to pick up knowledge.

Candace Four shrugged. "I guess we can't expect calendars to be the same across dimensions. Months and years are mostly arbitrarily derived from movements of things in the sky, after all, and given that you're from an entirely different galaxy ..."

"And I guess thirty-nine years ago would be, uh, whatever 2038 minus thirty-nine - one thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine?" Six mused, not really hearing what Four had said (but not caring all that much anyway).

Once again, Four and Four's Ferb seemed surprised, sharing a glance with each other. At last, Four spoke up again. "You're thirty-nine?"

"Huh?" Candace Six had gotten distracted watching a flock of birds fly past, trying to determine if they were like any birds she'd seen before. Probably not, of course, but so many things were strange and weird in this universe that it was nice to something as relatively familiar as birds.

Wow, that sounded pathetic and weak, didn't it? Still, she wasn't quite ready to abandon the thought just yet. She'd only been here for less than a day yet, and she was already succumbing to homesickness?

No, she decided. It wasn't so much Coruscant she missed, really, as Phineas. And Luke and Andrea and Tyrria and Anakin. Of course, you might argue that home was wherever your family was, in which case she supposed that she did miss Coruscant. And she did, of course. It was her home too.

But if the rest of her family had been here, this whole thing would have had an entirely different tone. It would have been a grand adventure, with Phineas at the helm, and she'd likely be having the time of her life.

But Phineas wasn't here.

And she missed him.

"Six?" Four repeated, snapping her out of her reverie.

"What?" She glanced back at the others still waiting around the parked groundcar. "Sorry. What - what'd you say?"

"You said, I mean, implied I guess, that you were thirty-nine ?"

Candace blinked. "I am, yes…?" She wasn't entirely sure where this line of questioning was going.

"I mean - you're younger than me." Four shook her head. "You were born four whole years after I was. I thought cross-dimension copies of yourself were always the same age?"

"I dunno." Candace shrugged. "I really and truly have no idea."

"You're forty-three?" Kevin asked slowly. "That's… different. I'm thirty-eight myself."

"I wonder how old Two and Three and Five and Seven are," Four said slowly. "I mean, I always assumed Five was the same age as me, heck, I assumed we all were the same age. I… guess not, though?"

"Can we just go inside the building now?" One groaned. "Does it really matter how old you all are anyway? It doesn't seem like it to me. Come on."

Four looked torn, but when Ferb nodded slightly and began walking towards the entrance of the building, she acquiesced and fell in line behind him.

"Finally," One grumbled to herself.

Six couldn't help but smile. One was fifteen years old, apparently. That was only a year younger than she'd been on the Death Star when she'd met Phineas for the very first time on the slippery metal joist overhanging an endless abyss. Her life had never quite been the same after that moment.

Of course, part of that might have been because she'd not known that Phineas was technically her brother until long after that point, until it simply wasn't enough to make her throw away what she knew was the best decision she'd ever made in her life. Obviously Candace One did know that the Phineas from her dimension was her brother. She'd made that much exceedingly clear.

But, maybe, just maybe… you could always hope, right? That's what Phineas would say. Hope for the best, and if it doesn't happen, make it so! Well… trying to play inter-universal matchmaker for a fifteen-year-old girl and her younger brother might seem rather odd. To a great many people.

But if One's Phineas was even the slightest bit like her own, she had no doubt that it would be worth it if it did work out for One in the end. She just wanted the little girl to be happy - as happy as she was.

And she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt where that had come from.

Still, she followed Four and this universe's Ferb and Kevin and One silently into the gaping entrance of the building.

A blast of air from an air cooler caught her full in the face as she stepped over the threshold. She blinked rapidly as her eyes watered from the sudden exposure. Once the tears subsided enough to allow her to see, she curiously examined the entire room.

It wasn't exactly a huge room, though it was by no means small, either. Several fancy holographs and a large chronometer hung from the walls and a sizable desk sat against one corner of the room, though no one sat behind it.

A stack of durasheets and a stylus lay on the desk, along with a large, rather unwieldy looking datapad. She almost felt inclined to go poking behind the desk and see what else it contained, but resisted the urge and turned to Four instead. "Is someone supposed to be here?"

Four took a quick glance at the empty seat behind the desk, a slightly miffed look crossing her face. "Yeah, I guess so." Her voice dropped to a low mumble as she turned away, back towards the elevator. "Can't say I particularly mind, though."

"Where are we even going in here?" Little Candace One spoke up, her question tinged with a hint of complaint.

Ferb gestured towards what appeared to be a set of elevator doors, pressing the button to summon the cab downwards.

Kevin pointed at one of the holographs on the wall. "Pe - I mean, Phineas . He went to college? That's… different."

Kevin still seemed supremely uncomfortable with the world at large after this morning. Even the simple question was positively dripping with unease - to such a degree that Candace Six was sure that pretty much anyone would be able to tell.

"Yeah?" Four responded. "Why - what happened in your dimension?"

"Oh, uh, you know." Kevin swallowed and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. "He and Ferb went to a technical engineering center of some kind. I… don't exactly know what they did there, but it's worked out well so far."

"Phineas grew up mostly on Tatooine." Candace felt as if she had to jump in. She couldn't let all these other hers brag about their brothers without standing up for the Phineas she knew and loved as well. "He was a moisture farmer there. It's nothing super cool in and of itself, but you should have seen the modifications he and Ferb made to their vaporators. It was the best and most efficient on the whole planet."

She'd never even seen her husband's modified vaporator, actually. But if he'd built it, it must be awesome. That was how pretty much everything he'd ever built had turned out, after all.

The other Candaces were shooting her odd looks, and although Candace Six would have liked to believe they were jealous, she had a sneaking feeling that it was more of them just not knowing what she was talking about. Which… had happened more than once. And was kind of annoying, to be honest.

"How long does this elevator normally take?" little Candace One asked again.

Four turned to the other Ferb. "I… don't know. Ferb?"

Ferb shrugged slightly and pointed over to a small-ish door in one corner of the room, over which hung a sign that she similarly couldn't read. This was getting annoying. How come she could understand everything spoken , but nothing written? It just dumb, in her opinion.

"Is it broken ?" Four asked, but another shrug was all she got in return. Apparently Ferb didn't know either. "Well, that's just great." Four sighed slightly. "Come on, guys. Phineas' lab is in the basement - so at least it won't be a particularly long hike."

"Oh, what fun this will be," One muttered under her breath.

Candace Six was just about to bring up the Force to Ferb again - to ask him if he might be able to use it to see what was wrong the elevator because you could do that, right? - but it seemed as if every time she got close to the subject something happened to distract her.

And this time, it was something back outside in the groundcar parking area that caught her eye. She only saw it for a split second, before it disappeared around a corner down the groundcar thoroughfare. But that split second was enough to make her double take in utter confusion and disbelief. She simply had to find out more. This would certainly make an interesting story to tell later, whether or not her eyes had indeed tricked her.

She turned hastily on her heel and darted back through the transparisteel doors and into the parking zone.

"Hey, where are you going?!" someone called out after her.

"I'll be right back!" she called over her shoulder. "Just give me a second!"

She jogged all the way through the parking zone, until she reached the point where it connected back onto the main thoroughfare. A large octagon-shaped sign boldly declared… something in large white letters.

She did, and looked around in puzzlement, but the object was nowhere to be seen.

"That's… so weird ," she said to herself, shading her eyes and watching the groundcars whizzing back and forth not more than two or three meters in front of her.

"What on earth are you doing?" It was either Four or Kevin who'd ran up behind her and was now leaning over, taking a huge breath. "You're gonna get lost, you know."

"Eh." Candace Six waved her hand flippantly. "I've got the best internal compass you've ever seen."

"Yeah, well, I'm not much inclined to trust your directions given that I'd have no idea whether you're right or not." So this was Kevin, then. Candace was getting better at identifying which of the copies of herself was which as time went on, even despite the fact that all their voices were functionally identical. "Come on. Four and One and Fern are already heading down to the basement. I mean, Ferb . Ugh, that's annoying." There was a moment of silence between them, broken only by the constant din of the groundcars rushing hither and thither right in front of them. "What did you even see, anyway?"

Candace Six blinked at the question. "I… don't know." She scratched her head slowly. "It was only for a second of course, but I could have sworn that I saw… well, it looked like a giant floating baby head." She grinned sheepishly and shrugged at her companion.

Kevin raised one eyebrow and stared flatly at her, clearly unamused. "Seriously?"

"Okay, okay, I realize that sounds… stupid." Six raised her hands defensively. "But I know what I saw, okay?"

Kevin looked about to say something, but she instead threw her arms in the air and sighed. "I mean, heck if I know. This dimension is messed-up in enough ways as it is already. Maybe you're right. Could be. Who knows?"

Candace frowned and tapped her foot pensively on the sidewalk. "You're right. Huh." She adjusted her clothes slightly. "You know, this stuff that Four lent me is so annoying. I feel so weird wearing this." She rolled her eyes slightly. "I really should have kept my own stuff on."

Kevin frowned. "At least you don't stick out like a sore thumb anymore." She pointed back towards the entrance of the building. "Come on. We can't stand around out here all day long."

"Yeah, I guess so," Candace relented. "Oh, wait, hang on - what's that over there?" She pointed across the groundcar thoroughfare to the large building on the other side.

It was a rather squat building, with a large, glowing sign attached above it's doors, covered in huge squiggles that she couldn't interpret one way or the other.

But the unintelligible gibberish on the sign wasn't what had caught Candace Six's attention. Instead, she was about ninety percent sure that just a second ago, she'd seen a Twi'lek walk across the sidewalk in front and disappear into the building. Which was a little weird, considering that Four had insisted that there were only humans on this planet.

But mostly very, very exciting and comforting at the same time. Maybe this Twi'lek was trapped here in this universe too. That was… well, she guessed that it would be unfortunate for the Twi'lek. But they'd also be someone who Candace Six could talk to about, well, stuff in general, without having to break every ten seconds to explain what a chance cube or therma-slice were. And maybe they knew somewhat of the way to get back home? Or at least back into the right universe.

"Wait, Six, I don't-"

But she didn't wait to listen to whatever Kevin had to say. It wasn't like she was going to get lost anyway - the place where the Twi'lek had gone was only right across the thoroughfare from Candace Four's building anyway. If she got lost in walking that far, then she deserved to get lost. Seriously.

And the lure of possibly being able to talk with someone from home, or somewhere close to home, was too strong.

She ignored whatever the red octagon said on it, and as soon as the thoroughfare was reasonably clear of groundcar traffic, darted across the black and yellow permacrete. Somebody blew a horn in the background, but it was too late - she was already across.

"You can't jaywalk like that!" Kevin shouted from across the thoroughfare.

Six didn't know why Kevin was so worried. "I'll be alright!" she yelled back. "I won't take take long, I promise!"

Kevin made some gesture, but Candace didn't see quite what it was before she turned away and jogged up to the entrance of of the building. Slipping inside, she looked around, trying to find out where the Twi'lek had gone.

This was an interesting building, for sure, what with the big holographs hanging on the walls, and the large desk across the floor with more glowing signs hanging behind it and people rushing here and there clutching little slips of something in their hands.

"Space Adventure XXIII," a mechanical voice sounded, echoing throughout the inside of the building. "Premiering at 10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, 2:30 PM. Get your tickets here or online."

Wait, so this was a spaceport? Of some sort, where you could buy tickets to travel into space? She… hadn't expected this at all. Especially given the general lack of such common things as repulsor-based technology outside. But it was to be expected, of course. Not even in this universe would everyone be expected to live out their entire lives on the same planet.

She wondered where the bus pods were. Probably around back.

Just as she'd about given up looking for the Twi'lek in the somewhat busy lobby, she glimpsed them again, disappearing around the corner of a hallway over towards the right.

"Hey!" she called out, cutting her way through the other people in the lobby, setting off after them. Behind her she faintly heard Kevin's voice complaining about something.

Well, Kevin could wait. This was rather more important to Six right now. It wasn't like Kevin had to follow her or anything. She could've stayed with One and Four and Ferb if she'd wanted.

Rounding the corner of the hallway, she saw the Twi'lek leaning against the wall, fiddling with a tiny datapad of some sort.

"Hey!" she said again, though slightly quieter.

"Huh?" The Twi'lek looked up, a confused look crossing their face. "Do I know you?"

"I mean, no," Candace Six paused, suddenly unsure of what to say. "Probably not at least. But it's nice to meet someone from home - or closer to home - anyway. My name is Candace."

"You can tell I'm from Rhode Island?" the Twi'lek asked. "I mean… okay." They shrugged. "I'm John."

Wait - she'd thought it was Ry- oh, never mind. The galaxy was a big place, after all. It was entirely possible that this Twi'lek - a female by her ears - was from somewhere else. Like Rhode Island, wherever that was. Candace Six suddenly frowned, realizing something odd about this particular Twi'lek. Well, aside from the fact that 'John' sounded like it was an odd name for a female. Maybe this was how Kevin felt about everyone. She could see how it could get annoying.

"What's with your lekku?" she asked. "I mean, I've been all over the place and I've never seen any that stand straight up like that." Her eyes widened slightly. "Not that I think it's bad, of course. Just curious."

John raised one eyebrow. "My what? Oh, you mean my psychic feelers?" She shook her head. "They all supposed to stand up like that. It's a lot of bone, up there, remember? It's what gives us Vanksloths our psychic abilities. If they break, then bad things happen."

Candace blinked. "Wait, what?" She frowned slightly. "I thought you were a Twi'lek?"

"A what?" John shook her head. "Nah. I'm an Almordian Vanksloth. But not just any old Vanksloth, as you can see by my uniform. I'm the exalted one - the highest member of the ruling Almordian council."

"You are?" Candace offered her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, then. I've never been to the planet of 'Almordia', but I'm sure I'll end up there someday if Phineas has anything to do with it." What were the odds of this? Meeting a member of some planetary high council? It was quite a coincidence to be sure. She'd definitely have to tell Phineas and the kids about this one. And also ask Phineas where exactly Almordia was, anyway.

"Uh… sure?"

"So you have psychic abilities?" Candace asked curiously. "Can you use it to, like, find stuff out or what? It's to do with the Force, right?"

John shook his head. "Vanksloths can only detect certain disturbances in the universe. They can't really control it, but it can still be helpful, as Lump Sharkboard certainly proved in Adventure XIV ." She paused for a moment. "Why do you care anyway? You a Speckie?"

"I… maybe?" Candace hesitated. "I don't really know what that means." She shook her head. "But that doesn't matter - can you detect any disturbances in the universe right now?" She leaned forward eagerly.

John raised one eyebrow. "I mean, might as well get in character for the contest anyway," she muttered, raising one hand into the air. "I can feel a small disturbance…"

Behind them, through the wall, they could suddenly hear the sound of a toilet flushing.

"... nah, it's gone." John shrugged and grinned. "Must need to gather more positronic impulses, eh?"

"Right…" Candace drawled. "Well, that's disappointing. I was kinda hoping you could tell me what exactly is going on in this universe."

"In the universe?" John echoed. "Oh, you mean like, in-universe." She nodded. "The lore is kinda confusing sometimes. I'm only a level thirteen master anyway, so I don't even know it all."

"Thirteen?" Candace Six wasn't sure exactly how high or low that was, so she didn't really know how to comment. Wasn't John supposed to the exalted member of the Almordian council? Thirteen must be pretty high then. That did sound like an impressive title, after all.

"Yeah," John continued. "If you really want to know anything at all about the, well, about the anything, really, you'd have to have the only level sixteen in the world." She smiled. "Or should I say universe? Either way, Baljeet Tjinder. He's the only level sixteen ever - and boy, he can tell you about literally anything . I've talked with him online a bit. It's honestly impressive."

"Anything?" Candace wasn't sure she was hearing correctly. "About the whole universe?" When John nodded, she raised her hand to her chin in thought. "This… Baljeet Tjinder. He can tell me about the different planets? About how to get between them? About how how to get out of the universe entirely? And into another one?"

"Anything at all." John repeated, checking her watch. "You can find him on the movie forums sometimes. But I've gotta go now - don't wanna miss the showing. Nice talking to you."

Candace nodded and waved as the Vanksloth walked away.

"Anything at all - about the whole universe?" she repeated. "That is… huh." She knew a Baljeet. From a long while, back during her life as a stormtrooper and later on as part of the Rebellion. They'd fallen out of regular contact, but still got in touch occasionally. And here, in this universe, he was apparently all-knowing - able to answer any question she should possibly have about the universe? It was a little weird to think of the Baljeet she knew like that. He had occasionally had some clever insights - she had just been thinking about one of them, in fact - but he'd never struck her as particularly wise , let alone that wise.

But this universe was weird enough in other ways anyway. Why should she doubt the Vanksloth?

"SIX!" Kevin rounded the corner, face red and obviously furious. "Where on earth have you been?! I've been hunting all over the place for you! You can't just run off like that!"

"Sorry," Candace Six hastily apologized, waving Kevin to follow her. "Come on, though. I just ran into the exalted one of the high Almordian council. She told me the name of someone who knows everything about the universe. Some 'Baljeet Tjinder'." She was getting more excited. "If we can find him - or her, I guess, you never know - we can ask him how to get off this planet - out of this universe - how to get home! Don't you see?" She paused. "I'm going to go ask Four if she knows anymore about where he is."

"Wait, no, Six, I don't-"

But Candace Six wasn't listening. Because she'd actually done something helpful this time. Found out that there was someone on this planet who knew all. If they just found him, she -and the rest of the other Candaces - could be home in no time. It was almost too perfect, really.

She heard Kevin groan in frustration behind her as she began jogging off back towards Four's building. But that was okay - Kevin would thank her later. Right now, there was only one thing that mattered.

Finding 'Baljeet Tjinder'.


	13. Lost in Danville

Candace could not believe her luck.

Now, she'd felt the same way many, many times in the past. Usually it was about her bad luck, however, of which she'd always had plenty. Take that incident on the Death Star some twenty-two years ago. She'd been wearing her armor, and the specially-soled footwear that it came with, and she'd still somehow had the bad luck to slip on a puddle of sewage and side across a hallway, through a door that just so happened to be open, and onto a tiny metal outcropping overhanging an endless abyss that, had she fallen, would have certainly meant inevitable death.

Of course, she hadn't fallen either, purely because someone - the same someone she'd been chasing down, actually - had seen her predicament, guessed what her fate would be, and had been kind hearted enough to cross enemy lines and save her life.

That someone had been Phineas Fletcher, of course, and at the time there was no way he could have known how that simple action would change the whole course of her entire life, causing her to rethink everything she'd held dear for years and years beforehand.

Of course, the fact that the Empire had just used the Death Star to actually blow up Alderaan didn't hurt, but… that wasn't what had made her rethink what she was doing with her life, questioning the things she'd never even thought to question before.

That had been entirely Phineas' doing.

So, in a way, you could say that slipping on that sewage puddle was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to her. After all, if that hadn't happened, well, who knew what could have happened instead? It would have almost for sure not included her marriage to Phineas and their four children, and for that reason alone she'd long ago decided that that slip in that sewage that day was actually the luckiest thing to ever happen to her.

But this, just now, was certainly in the running for second place.

Because she'd had the luck to run into a spaceport here in Candace Four's universe. And in that spaceport, she'd had the luck to run into the exalted one of the high council of Almordia - a sentient humanoid that resembled a Twi'lek, actually, but with lekku that stood straight up on end and was actually a 'Vanksloth'. Oh yeah, and that also had weak psychic abilities.

And if accidentally meeting an esteemed member of a ruling planetary council wasn't lucky enough, John the Vanksloth had told her of one 'Baljeet Tjinder', an apparent 'level sixteen', one who knew the answers to any question she might have about the entirety of the universe. How this Baljeet - who surprisingly shared a name with her old partner from when she'd been a stormtrooper - had managed to do that, she didn't know. It must have had something to do with the Force, right? Well, obviously.

But, really, Candace didn't care how Baljeet Tjinder had gotten his limitless knowledge. She just cared about finding him and putting that knowledge to use - to get home. Back to Coruscant, back to Phineas, to Luke, to Andrea, to Tyrria, to Anakin. Back where this whole crazy mess could just be nothing more than a memory and maybe a story to tell over dinner.

But for any of that to happen, first she'd have to find Baljeet Tjinder, wherever he may be.

"Six!" Kevin exclaimed exasperatedly from behind her for what had to be the thirtieth time in the past thirty seconds. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"

Yes, this was the other thing she had to do - deal with Kevin. Candace Six still didn't know why Kevin was being such a pain in the choobies about the whole thing. It wasn't like she had to follow her or anything. It would have been just as easy for Kevin to march back across the groundcar thoroughfare and into Candace Four's small spacescraper - which was really hardly deserving of the moniker, but whatever.

Still, for whatever reason, Kevin insisted on coming along. And on complaining about it.

"I already told you," Six repeated. "I'm going to find Baljeet Tjinder. He knows everything about the universe. The Vanksloth said he's a level sixteen." Six paused for a moment. "I don't know exactly what that means, but it must be something good, right?"

"No!" Kevin insisted. "First off, what in the name of - what is a Vanksloth anyway? And why do you think that this Ba - Bal-"

"Baljeet Tjinder."

"-Baljeet Tjinder would would anything more than, say, Four's Petra and Fern ? I mean, come on!"

Candace Six only just barely resisted the urge to throw her arms in the air and sigh dramatically. Instead, she stopped just short of the spaceport's front entrances and turned to face Kevin. "They look like Twi'leks."

Kevin shook her head, making a weird face. " What looks like a what ?"

"The Vanksloth, okay? Geez. At first I actually thought it was a Twi'lek, but I realized her lekku were all weird and standing straight up, and I'd never seen a Twi'lek's lekku do that before. So I asked - and she told me, no, that she was actually an Almordian Vanksloth." She stopped at the look of utter disbelief and confusion on Kevin's face. "What?"

"Oh, I don't know anymore!" Kevin did what Six had been wanting to do this whole time and threw her arms up in the air, almost whacking someone passing by in the head. "Everything here is so weird ! I'm trying be calm - to stay on top of myself, but how am I supposed to be able to do that when there's all this stuff going on here and - and then there's you, who can just ramble on and half the stuff is stuff I don't even know what you're talking about, but I'm sure it's all perfectly real, isn't it? Isn't it?"

Candace Six blinked. "Wait, you don't have Twi'leks in your universe? Or… Vanksloths?"

"No." Kevin shook her head. "No I don't. Not unless we're thinking of something that's actually the same, but has a different name for some reason. I mean, heck, I'd believe it. Why shouldn't I? You can't even read , can you?"

"What?" Six was taken aback by the sudden question, and also slightly insulted. "Of course I can read - what are you trying to imply? I'm thirty-nine years old, for crying out loud. Why would you think I can't read ?"

Kevin glared for a second but then pointed at one of the holographs on the wall. "I'm not trying to insult you," she protested. "Look - what's that say?"

"I…" Six drawled out slowly, not even having to look at the holograph to realize Kevin's point. "No, I can't read that . It's… I don't know what language it is, but it doesn't look like Basic, and I can only really read that in Aurebesh anyway. And that sure isn't Aurebesh."

"Ah, yes," Kevin responded dryly. "Because your dimension speaks in English, but you call it 'basic' and it has an entirely different writing system. And why shouldn't it? Probably for the same reason that people in these other dimensions eat…" she shuddered slightly. " Meat ."

"English?" Six echoed. "What is - oh never mind." She paused, trying to think of something to say. She really could sympathize with Kevin on this matter, actually. A lot about Four's universe was different and weird from what she knew. And she wanted to be home so badly. But she tried to imagine what Phineas would say if he were to be standing right here in the spaceport next to her, trapped an entirely different universe, surrounded by holographs and billboards scrawled over with unintelligible squiggles, with no less than seven other people who, for lack of a better description, were her. And they were all crazy, no less.

Well, he certainly wouldn't get aggravated for struggling to cope with the sudden new information crashing down on her like a Kaminoan tidal wave. For sure not. So she wouldn't do that either. He would probably smile at her, in the way he did, and maybe crack some joke. And although he'd be just as interested in getting home as she, she knew that he'd forever be optimistic about the chances of actually doing that.

So, she smiled as comfortingly as she could muster. "Why is a manufacturing droid never lonely?"

"What?" Kevin shook her head.

"Because he's always making new friends!" Candace Six rolled her eyes. "Okay, yeah, I know it's a bad joke. And this really isn't the time for joking anyway." She paused for a moment. "Look… I really just want to get home. This place is… it's nice enough, but I couldn't stand it if I had stay here for too long."

"I know!" Kevin exclaimed, actually nodding for once. Nodding was good. It meant that there was something they could agree on. "Honestly, this place… it creeps me out a little. I mean look at it!" She gestured around at the inside of the spaceport. "There's only humans, wherever you look. And that's because here, other species get, well, they get…" She hesitated again. "You know."

"I can agree with you on that one," Six replied. "Because to you, eating a bantha would be like me eating a, uh, a Twi'lek, right?" Six made a face at that idea. Blech. Disgusting.

"I… guess so?" Kevin frowned, eyeing the expression on her face. "At least you know how I feel now - though I still have no idea what either of those things are."

Candace Six took a breath and reminded herself to be more like Phineas, and not get aggravated again. "They're - well, Twi'leks are sentient humanoids, but they're not humans. Still, sentient and just as capable. You wouldn't eat one - that'd be, like, cannibalism or something similar. Banthas are just, like, big hairy animals that live on Tatooine. I mean, you can find them in lots of places now, but that's where they came from. And they're not sentient."

Kevin nodded and sighed. "Like… fish, then. But that on live on land, somehow."

"I… sure." Candace shrugged. "Like fish? I guess so? I mean, I don't know if there's any banthas on Arkanis, but whatever." She tapped her foot impatiently on the ground, looking around at the inside of the spaceport. Time was ticking, and standing around here talking was wasting precious seconds that could be better spent in finding Baljeet Tjinder. "Look… I'm sure you think this place is weird. Heck, I think it's weird. It is weird, in all honesty. So that's why I'm doing everything I can to help get out of here. I know Four's Phineas and Ferb are doing everything they can - but a little more help can't possibly hurt, right?"

"I mean, I guess not," Kevin relented. "Still, you think that 'Baljeet Tjinder' is all-knowing ? That's - that's impossible."

"So it is." Candace tapped her chin thoughtfully. "He must be really in tune with the Force or something. Even so, I didn't know that was something you could do with the Force. I mean, it's no more impossible than being somehow zapped out of your bed into another dimension where, among other things, Basic's got an entirely different writing system that's nothing more or less than complete bumblefluff to me, but everyone else can read it perfectly. So what I'm saying is, why not give it a shot?"

"I…" Kevin sighed. "...guess so?" She shook her head. "What if we get lost, though? This is another dimension, after all. We know nothing at all about it."

"We won't get lost," Candace said, grinning. "You can read this nonsense, can't you?" She waved her arm in the air, loosely gesturing at the holographs on the walls. Kevin nodded. "See? You'll be my eyes and I'll be your protection." She patted her side where her blaster was tucked into the waistband of the clothes that Four had lent her. Not that it actually worked anymore, after Candace Three had torn it into pieces and pulled out its insides, but she could certainly use it to bluff, if a situation should call for it."Nothing'll be able to stop us. And we'll find Baljeet Tjinder, and he'll tell us how to get home, and we can get out of here, back to the real world."

"To Wilma?" Kevin got a faraway look in her eyes for a moment. Then she shrugged. "Okay."

"Good deal." Six nodded. "Now come on - we've got a lot to do. Let's burn sky until we see lines."

"Yes…" Kevin frowned. "...lets? I have no idea what that means either. But whatever." She paused. "So… we're finding someone named 'Baljeet Tjinder', then? Who… knows everything about the universe. I… find that hard to believe, but I guess falling into another dimension has that effect on you."

"Yes, yes, yes." Candace pointed to the doors leading back out to the groundcar parking zone outside the spaceport. "Now come on. The sooner we find him, the sooner we get out of here."

"Hang on." Kevin raised on hand. "I think I may be able to help with that - if they have it in this dimension, of course."

"What?"

"Just come on - gimme a second." Kevin turned and started walking towards the desk at the other end of the spaceport.

"Wait, no, I…" Candace Six started to protest. But she stopped herself midway through. After all, Kevin could read this gibberish scrawled everywhere. What had she called it? Engrish? Or something of that sort. Either way, she had to keep that fact in mind, and especially so if they were going to be working together to find Baljeet Tjinder. "Okay, fine." She crossed her arms and paced after Kevin, coming to a stop in front of the desk.

"Can I help you?" the attendant at the desk asked. "What tickets are you interested in?" He was certainly more interested in his job than the lastbuspod station attendant Candace'd seen here in Four's universe.

"Yes, yes you can." Kevin cleared her throat, and muttered something about not making a fool of herself under her breath. "Do you have a thing called a 'phonebook' here?"

"What's a phonebook?" Six whispered curiously.

The attendant blinked. "I… do?" He reached under the desk and retrieved a… wait, was that a book ? Not a data-tape or a flimsiplast replica, as she'd expected, but an actual ink-on-paper, honest-to-goodness book? That was… that was new. Or old, depending on the way you looked at it.

Kevin didn't seemed too perturbed by it, however. The attendant plopped the massive yellow-paged book down in front of them, and she immediately grabbed ahold of it and began rifling through the pages, not taking any care at all with what Six could only assume was an antique of some kind.

Well, there had been an awful lot of groundcars running around outside. Maybe Four's universe just… ran off groundcars and paper books. That was an interesting thought, for sure. She looked around at the posters in the buspod station and their colorful depictions of what looked to be distant planets, no doubt advertising trips there. Four's universe could do that , but still used groundcars and paper books? Weird.

"...Tjin, Tjinad," Kevin mumbled to herself, running one finger down a long column of nonsense inside the book's pages. Six didn't know what Kevin was looking for, nor could she tell if Kevin was going to find it, but she did hope that the book was of some help. "Tjinday, Tjindar - aha! - Tjinder, Baljeet. Right here." She tapped one of the lines of squiggles in the book.

Candace Six blinked. "Okay? Is that… a good thing? Does it, like, tell you where he lives or something?" She suddenly realized that there was a very good possibility that Baljeet Tjinder was on another planet entirely. That'd be… an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. Maybe one of the buspods from this very spaceport could take them where they needed to go if that should prove to be the case.

"Looks like she's either married or has an adult brother," Kevin replied. "There's also a 'Tjinder, Ginger' listed here. Your friend say anything about that?"

"No." Six shook her head. "But that doesn't really matter either way, does it? All that really matters is - do those little squiggles tell you where he's at?"

"Nah - but I've got his phone number. Hang on one more second."

Candace blinked again in confusion. "Oookay?" She wasn't entirely sure what a phone number was, but Kevin was treating it like it was a good thing to have? Well, she was glad they had it too, then. It was something they hadn't had before, and they had it now. That was always a plus, right? Unless the object in question was bantha fodder. Then… not so much.

Kevin retrieved a small datapad from her pocket and fiddled with it for a second.

Unless you were a bantha farmer, of course, Candace Six decided, smiling slightly to herself. She had managed to find something positive about having bantha fodder. Maybe Phineas had rubbed off more on her than she'd thought. And that was definitely a good thing.

"Stupid other dimension junk," Kevin muttered as she shoved her datapad back into her pocket. "Nothing works right here." She pushed the big phonebook back towards the station attendant. "Do you have a phone I could borrow?"

Candace Six had no idea what a phone was, but she was starting to click some pieces together in her brain. "Wait - are datapads called 'phones' in this universe?" She grinned foolishly, feeling inordinately proud of herself for figuring out even just a tiny piece of the strangeness that Four's universe.

Kevin shot her a significant look out of the corner of her eye, and Six suddenly realized that the attendant was staring at her with a questioning look in his eyes. She cleared her throat awkwardly. "Oh, you know me - always chewing the luna-weed. Just, uh, ignore me. And the d-phone." She wasn't exactly sure why she suddenly felt the need to hide her origin from the people of this universe. Hadn't Kevin just this morning said to 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do'? Now, she didn't exactly know what or where 'Rome' was, but the meaning of the statement had still been clear enough. Blend in. Don't make waves.

It was why she'd grudgingly agreed to Candace Four's offer of these annoying, annoying clothes this morning. It was why she'd been just so eagerto chase down and talk to who she'd assumed was a Twi'lek - someone she wouldn't have to try to blend in around.

Because, yeah, not attracting undue attention was a good thing. But it was also a really, really hard thing.

For a moment more the attendant stared, but then shrugged slightly and turned back to Kevin, prompting Six to let out a pent-up breath with an astonishingly and mortifyingly loud gasp.

You could almost hear Kevin rolling her eyes. "So about that phone?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." The attendant glanced back at Six for another moment, then handed Kevin a small gray object with many buttons on it. Six guessed it was a phone. And it also looked far less like a datapad than what she'd expected. The thing that the Vanksloth had had - that was a datapad for sure.

This thing? Not so much.

Nevertheless, Kevin wasn't fazed at all. She punched a few of the buttons on the phone in a seemingly random order, and then raised it to her ear.

"Wait, is that thing like a comlink?" she hissed under her breath to Kevin, who waved her hand in the air.

"Shh!"

"Sorry." Six rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. She leaned back against the desk, waiting as patiently as she could force herself to, which wasn't very, all things considered, although she thought she did pretty well regardless.

"Hello?" Kevin suddenly asked. "Yes, is this the, uh, Tjinder household?" There was another pause. "It is - wait, no, you know Candace - I mean, me?" She glanced at Six and shrugged confusedly.

Six only tilted her head slightly and tapped her foot once. So Baljeet Tjinder knew Candace Four? Well, it would only make sense, after all. If he knew everything about the entire universe, then he'd surely know about Four as well. It was in the definition of 'all-knowing', after all. Only the fact that they were from another universe would prevent him from knowing about her and Kevin.

"Yes, yes, of course!" Kevin laughed nervously. "You know, I was just thinking about… visiting you - you two? Two. What? No reason at all." There was an awkward pause. "Yeah, about that… I've, uh, forgotten what your address is? Would you mind, like, refreshing my memory a bit?"

Six leaned forwards a bit. This was sounding good, from what she could hear - and understand.

"O - okay. I'll remember that. Thanks. Oh, yeah. My kids? I don't have any- I mean, they're - they're fine. Uh… they say 'hi'? Yes, yes - okay, look, Ireallygottagonowbye ."

Kevin slammed the phone down on the desk and took a deep breath. "Wow. That was… interesting."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Candace Six leaned forwards even more. "Did you find out where he lives?"

"I did." Kevin nodded. "329 Bainbridge Lane."

Candace hesitated. "That's… where's that?"

Kevin shrugged. "I dunno. But we can get directions now." She cleared her throat and turned back to the desk, handing the phone back to the attendant. "Here you go. Now, can you give us some directions?"

The attendant shook his head with mild disbelief coloring his eyes. "I can try. Where're you trying to get?"

"329 Bainbridge Lane," Kevin repeated. "Me and my… friend here are… kinda new in town. So we'd appreciate if you were as clear as possible. You know what? Maybe write them down for us."

"Sure, I guess." The attendant pulled out a slip of durasheet from somewhere and began rapidly scribbling out more of those unrecognizable characters.

"Hang on," Six interjected. "Writing directions on durasheet may not be the best idea - it might take us a while to get there and what would we do if they disappeared halfway there?"

Kevin glanced at her askance again. "What're you talking about? They're not gonna disappear. It's just paper - that's not how paper works, you know."

"Oh." Suddenly Six was feeling embarrassed. She really should guessed that, shouldn't she? At least based on the enormous 'phonebook' being made entirely of paper too. Apparently Four's universe was very backwards in that way. "Carry on, then."

She averted her eyes and studied the insides of the spaceport while waiting for the attendant to finish with his writing. A few long minutes passed before he finally spoke up again.

"Alright. Here you go."

"Thanks," Kevin said, taking the slip of durasheet paper from his hand. "Come on, Six. We've got directions now."

"It's about time," Six remarked, subconsciously feeling for the stock of her blaster under the clothes Four had lent her as she followed Kevin out of the spaceport and into the groundcar parking zone again. "How far away is it, anyway?"

Kevin squinted at the paper in her hand for a moment. "Not… that far? I mean… we could probably walk it if we wanted to. Uh, let's see… four and three and six and one more…" She looked up. "Eh, I don't know. It's apparently about fourteen miles. Walking that might not be such a good idea after all."

"Fourteen miles?" To someone who had been expecting a number high into hundreds of thousands at the absolute lowest, it sounded pretty good. "That's not that far at all." Just then, Candace Six remembered that this was another universe - one that well might have a different definition of the word 'mile'. "It isn't, is it?"

"No." Kevin shook her head. "It's not - it's just a little far to walk is all."

"Oh. Six thought for a moment. "Well, can't we just take the air taxi?"

"A what?" Kevin raised one eyebrow. "Air taxi? I mean, I get 'taxi', at least." She shrugged. "You've got, like, the science fiction dimension anyway. With flying taxis, apparently, because why not?"

"Well, I'd guess that here it'd probably be, like, a ground taxi or something. Groundcars seem to be the thing in this universe anyway."

"Cars."

"What?"

"Oh, never mind." Kevin waved her off flippantly. "A taxi is a good idea, actually - but the main issue is that we have no way of paying for one."

That was true. Candace Six remembered how when they'd only just arrived here, and stumbled onto the very first buspod station, how the attendant there had rejected her perfectly good credits out of hand. Apparently those weren't worth anything here in Four's universe. Which was a real pain.

"So what's the plan?" she asked.

Kevin raised one eyebrow. "You're asking me ? How would I have any idea at all?"

Six shrugged. "I don't know. I figured that since you can read this language, you might be able to figure something out that I can't." It'd seemed like a decent assumption to Six, at least. She hadn't really wanted to leave the plan up to Kevin, but had figured if that had the best chance of getting her home, then it would be worth it in the end. But apparently being able to interpret the nonsense writing here in Four's dimension wasn't as helpful as Six had thought.

"Yeah, I mean… I guess that's a fair point," Kevin relented. She looked down at the paper in her hand again, then up at the signs dotting the groundcar thoroughfare. "I have no idea, though. I don't see anything that looks like a bus stop. I have no idea whether taxis are even a thing in this dimension. Unless we can hitch a ride somehow, I just don't see how we can get there without trying to walk all fourteen miles."

"Well, we're this deep into this thing," Candace Six replied firmly. "I'm not giving up now. Come on. I've never operated a groundcar before, but it can't be that hard, right?"

"Say what?" Kevin echoed as Six grabbed her hand and started pulling her back towards the parking zone in front of Four's building. "Wait - what are you-"

Candace Six didn't hesitate this time. She paused for a just split second for an opening in the flow of groundcar traffic to appear, then plunged ahead, darting across the width of the thoroughfare, while Kevin yelled at her from behind about 'jaywalking' again. Seriously, if Kevin had her way, they would probably grow old and die on one side of the thoroughfare.

She finally stopped when they'd made it back to Four's groundcar - the one that they'd taken to get here in the first place.

"What are you thinking ?" Kevin exclaimed, finally succeeding in yanking her arm out of Six's grasp. "There's crosswalks there for a reason , you know. You're gonna get us killed one of these times." She paused, watching Six examine the groundcar. "What are… oh no. Oh no. You can't be serious."

"Oh, come on." Six lowered her brow determinedly. "It can't be that hard. And if we are all supposed to be the same person as Candace Four, then it should let us turn it on, too." That was how fingerprint detection worked, right? At least, it made sense to Six.

Kevin sighed deeply. "You do realize that it's Four's car, right? We can't - can't just take it."

"I don't think she'll mind," Six insisted. "After all, won't it be worth it if we manage to find Baljeet Tjinder anyway?" She stuck her thumb on the small pad on the driver's side door.

"That - that," Kevin spluttered. "That may be true, but you still can't do that. You have to at least ask first. And you said you've never even driven before? How do you expect to get anywhere?"

"Well, it can't be that different from a repulsor-powered craft, can it? Come on, trust me. I can handle it just fine." She shrugged. "Besides, I may have operated some sort of groundcar a couple times some years ago. I think."

Kevin buried her face in her hands. "It doesn't even matter. I can drive anyway, so I know we'd be okay. Still - this car does not belong to us . Is it that hard to understand?"

"If that's big a deal, we can go inside and find Four and ask her," Six finally decided. "But only if doesn't take too long. I don't want to lose this opportunity."

"Fine." Kevin reluctantly nodded after a long pause.

"Ugh, okay, let's go do this then." Six shut the groundcar door again, and turned, walking back inside the entrance of Four's spacescraper. She glanced around the small lobby again, wondering where exactly Four had gone again.

"Can I do something for you?"

The voice startled her slightly, and she whirled around to face a random woman sitting behind the desk she'd seen empty before. "Yes," she replied. "Yes you can." She wasn't entirely sure who this was, but could only assume that she was acting as a secretary droid of some sort.

Kevin walked inside behind her. "What's going on in here?"

Ignoring the interruption, Six leaned on the desk. "You know where Four - excuse me - Candace went?" This was Four's universe, after all. Therefore, it stood to reason that she'd be only known as 'Candace', and not 'Four'.

"Are you more of Ms. Flynn's extended family?" the woman echoed. "There sure are a lot of you. The family resemblance is… remarkable."

Six glanced over at Kevin, not quite sure what what meant by that. "Sure?" Kevin only shrugged in response.

"Do you mind if I ask what brings you all to town so suddenly? I mean, I've never heard of any of you before, and all the sudden there's like…" she counted on her fingers. "Six of you. Or something."

"Eight."

"Excuse me?"

"Eight," Six explained. "There's the little One, then Two and Three and Four belongs here and Five and me and Seven and Kevin here." She jabbed her thumb in Kevin's general direction, who gave a small wave.

"Ah." The secretary paused for a second. "You numbered each other? That's… interesting."

"Yeah, it was, well, Two kinda made everybody. But she was right - it is hard to keep everybody straight when you all look more or less the same."

"Yes, I can see that, I suppose." She shrugged. "I can't tell you where Ms. Flynn is, but I have her number if you wanna call her."

Six glanced back at Kevin who stepped forwards and cleared her throat. "Actually, you know what - change of plans because Four likely wouldn't trust us to drive her car anyway. Can you call us a taxi somewhere?"

"I… suppose I could?" The secretary frowned slightly and muttered something under her breath that Six couldn't quite catch, before looking up again. "Where exactly is 'somewhere'?"

Kevin glanced down at the paper in her hand again. "329 Bainbridge Lane. It's not that far - says here that you take Main Street for-"

"I know where it is," the secretary cut her off. "I can call you a cab if you want me to."

"Yes." Kevin nodded. "That'd be great, thanks. You're a valuable member of this team. Your contr- I mean… just thanks."

Six looked back at Kevin. Oh, that was right. Kevin had said that she was a mayor in her own universe, hadn't she? Yes, yes she had. Politics would be important to her, then. She'd once met another mayor back in her own universe, on that one time that Phineas had convinced her to travel back to Tatooine. Vanth, his surname was, although she couldn't recall his first. He'd been the de facto 'mayor' of Freetown on the desert planet. A somewhat rough character, too.

But the experience had at least granted her some past experience with what a mayor's job was like. She certainly didn't envy Kevin the job, that much was for sure.

Candace Six remained silent as the secretary rambled on the phone, presumably 'calling a cab'. At last, she hung up. "Okay. There was a cab just around the corner, actually, so it's just gonna be a few seconds before it's here. They'll pick you up at the entrance of the parking lot." She sat the phone back down on the desk. "Have fun."

"Oh, we will." Candace Six rubbed her hands together excitedly. "Thanks for your help."

"Certainly," Kevin agreed, shooting a pointed glance in Six's direction. "You're a lifesaver - if I'd let her drive, then probably literally too." She motioned out the door. "Come on. We don't want to miss the cab."

Six nodded. "Right."

They walked back outside into the parking zone, stopping under the shade of a nearby tree to wait out their transport's arrival. It wasn't a particularly long wait, which was a good thing, given that the constant traffic on the groundcar thoroughfare was making it difficult to talk. It was therefore with much alacrity that Six heard Kevin speak up. "There's the taxi."

It was another groundcar, as she was expecting by now. They clambered into the back seats, fastening the acceleration straps, and the vehicle pulled out into the thoroughfare, making quick tracks towards their destination.

"This is very good," Six said aloud as they rode. "We're making excellent progress."

Kevin nodded slightly. "I guess so? We've pretty much found Baljeet Tjinder, at least. Now it's just a matter of seeing if he actually knows as much as you say."

Candace Six frowned. "Yeah, of course."

She didn't have any particular reason to doubt the Vanksloth, but she hadn't really had a really good reason to trust her, either. That… would hopefully not be a problem?

Either way, it didn't matter now.

* * *

Kevin wasn't sure what to expect anymore.

Her life had been one of nice and neat patterns. Orderly and methodical, meticulously organized and spotlessly neat. She got up at the same time everyday, got dressed, ate breakfast, maybe relaxed a little bit, and then, if it was a weekday, would drive down to City Hall and get to work. And sometimes even if it wasn't a weekday.

She enjoyed her job, after all. And her life in general.

But now, she no longer knew what to expect anymore. Everything she'd ever taken for granted in her life had been unceremoniously uprooted and turned on its head, all at the same time. It was almost too much to make.

And if Kevin Clarke had been anyone different, it might have been too much to take. But she wasn't anyone different. She was Kevin Clarke, mayor of Danville. Human mayor, no less, which had broken Danville's previous trend of seven consecutive non-human mayors. Being elected had so far been one of the crowning moments of her life.

She could still remember the night when that news had come through, almost as if it had been yesterday. She'd hardly been expecting to win. Sure, Wilma had never ceased encouraging her, as he always did - but he was her husband anyway, so it didn't really count.

Everyone knew that if you wanted to even have a chance at actually winning, you had to come off favorably to the canid population of the Tri-State Area. As the single largest population group in the whole district, they were also the most powerful voter bloc. It was incredibly difficult to run against them and still win - as many failed races in the past by various candidates had shown. Yet, you couldn't cater exclusively to them - the fact that they were the largest single voter bloc meant nothing if the rest of the population united against you. It was a fine line to walk, really.

And she'd tried so hard. And done her absolute best. The smear campaign that Stanley Hirano had run against her had been unprecedented, and she'd spent practically half the campaign constantly trying to debunk the sheer amount of lies and rumors being spread about.

And on the final, fateful night, she'd spent all night watching the news on TV as the ballots were being counted, and internally steeling herself for an imminent defeat, telling herself that it wouldn't be so bad, really, that she was still young, and there was plenty of time to gather more money and mount another campaign at some point in the future.

"Oh, please," Wilma had said laughingly from his seat on the couch next to her. "You're gonna win and you know it. There's no one better to take charge of the city, in my opinion."

"Of course you would say that," she'd retorted, shoving him. "Sadly, it's not really your opinion that matters here."

"Well, it matters a little bit, doesn't it?" he teased. "I did vote for you, you know. So it does count for something after all."

"You'd better have," she retorted, smiling. "At least your opinion'll make up about a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousandth of the ultimate decision, then."

"And when you win, I'll betcha it'll be be that two-fifty-thousandth that made it, too."

"If," she'd corrected him. "If."

"No." He put his arm around her. "You got this."

And just then, the television anchorwoman had cleared her throat, flicking her tail back and forth. "We're getting word from the County Clerk's office that they've finished counting the votes."

Despite her trepidation, Kevin had leaned forwards towards the television, willing it play faster.

"Yes, yes." The anchorwoman looked off to the side of the camera and nodded. "And the preliminary results are in. The next mayor of Danville is… Kevin Clarke." The news ticker on the bottom of the screen updated, and a giant graph of vote distribution flashed up on the screen. "Congratulations, Mrs. Mayor."

"What?!" Kevin'd sprang up from the couch and dragged Wilma up after up her, spinning him around and around in exhilaration. "I won! I won!" She paused and pulled him into a tight hug. "We won."

"I told you so, didn't I?" He stuck out his tongue, his eyes dancing under his dark hair. "You should know to not doubt me by now."

"I've gotta call Mom and Dad and Petra and Fern and - and everyone!" She darted across the living room and snatched up her phone eagerly. This was amazing .

With an abrupt lurch, Kevin was rudely dragged out of her memory into the present once more.

She blinked and refocused her eyes as the taxi came to a halt in front a mostly nondescript house. Next to her, Six was bouncing up and down on the seat like an excited child. Kevin sighed slightly.

All of that was so far away now. But she was determined to get it back. Law school hadn't prepared her for this. Her Ph.D. in political science hadn't prepared her for this. Her childhood hadn't prepared her for this.

Well, it had, to a small degree. Petra and Fern had always liked to tinker around with stuff. And they were smart, and good at it too. Someday she should ask them about the possibility of falling into another dimension entirely, if only to see what they'd say.

Kevin's two little brothers used to wile away summer afternoons banging about making things in the backyard, and although she'd never seen them mess about with something like this, it wasn't too terribly far removed from the things they had messed about with.

Once, a good chunk of time ago, they'd built a rocket that almost actually made it into outer space before reaching the point at which the stress of high-speed travel was too great for a aircraft glued together by children in their backyard. Which had disappointed Petra and Fern, of course, although she couldn't help but think they were being too hard on themselves. Whether or not they'd actually been able to make it to space, they'd almost made it - and that was more than most people could say.

In fact, she was willing it wager that it was more than any tween could say, especially.

EIther way, prepared or no, Kevin was determined to make it through. There was too much for her to lose should she not. Her job, her constituents, her city - all those were important, yes. But even more so were Wilma, and Lincoln and Lauren Flynn-Fletcher, and Petra and Fern, and all the rest of her friends and extended family.

And it was for them that she'd decided to swallow her misgivings and follow Candace Six's plan. Track down 'Baljeet Tjinder'? Okay, that she could do.

Walk straight up to his house and demand an audience? That was… slightly less attractive a plan, but she'd committed to this thing, and she was gonna see it through. The same determination that had powered her through her years of schooling had been woken up again, and had been turned full-force onto the avenue of getting themselves home.

And Four's Petra… er, Phineas was already working on a way to do that. But if she could do anything to accelerate that process, she was willing to try.

"Come on, come on!" Six exclaimed, unbuckling and scrambling from the taxicab. "We're here! Let's do this thing!"

And if that 'anything' included following Six all over town, interpreting for the functionally illiterate woman, then that's what she would do. At least Six could sort of understand her when she complained about the sheer weirdness of Four's dimension. Two was not the empathizing type, that much was for sure, and One and Three and Five and Seven all acted as if this dimension was mostly familiar, with only a few exceptions here and there, not the utterly alien world that it presented to Kevin's homesick brain.

One of those exceptions being the fact that Three and Four and even Six herself were committing incest with their own little brothers. It was a fact that didn't sit well with Kevin either, but she prided herself on her self-control on dealing with it. After all, finding ways to work around disagreeable subjects and reach mutually acceptable compromises was kind of a big thing in politics. It was one of the reasons why she believed that she could help Six in persuading this Baljeet Tjinder to give them the information they needed.

"I'm coming," she replied, unstrapping and climbing out herself. "Give me a second."

Six paused at the door and turned back to her. "This is the right place, right?"

"Uh…" Kevin glanced at the numbers screwed into the wall of the house. "Three, Two, Nine. Should be."

"Those are your numbers?" Six asked. "They… almost look like the numbers in Aurebesh, too. I didn't try to read them because I didn't suspect it, but if I had known that, I bet I could have."

Kevin shrugged. "Good for you, I guess? Don't worry about it, I don't mind translating for you." She gestured towards the door, suddenly feeling a bit apprehensive. It was an entirely different world, after all. "So… are we gonna do this?"

Candace Six grinned widely. "Do garrals have freckles?" She must have seen the look that emerged on Kevin's face, because her own smile fell slightly. "Yes, yes they do." She turned back and pounded on the door.

"You could use the doorbell, you know," Kevin pointed out. "Or do you not have those in your dimension either?"

"The what?" Six frowned slightly and reached up to bang on the door again, but right then a clicking sound came from inside, as a deadbolt was drawn back and a lock was unlatched. And the door opened inwards, revealing a tall, dark-haired woman.

Kevin's eyes opened wider. So this must be Baljeet Tjinder, then.

"Oh, hey, Candace," the woman greeted Six, sighing slightly. "So you came after all. What's going on?"

But Candace Six was having none of that, apparently. Because the next moment she apparently caught a glimpse of something inside that Kevin couldn't see from her position on the porch.

"Baljeet!" she exclaimed, raising one hand slightly, then pushing her way inside the house, past the woman in the doorway. "What are you doing here?!"

"What in the name of-" the woman started, looking slightly miffed as she was more or less shoved out of the way. "I can't believe…"

Her voice trailed away as she suddenly met Kevin's gaze. "Hi," Kevin greeted, as politely as she knew how, given the situation.

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Okay… what exactly is going on around here?"

From inside the house, Kevin suddenly heard a high-pitched voice. "Candace, you had better put me down right this instant!" She rolled her eyes and invited herself into the house, walking past the obviously completely baffled woman in the doorway. Mainly, she needed to make sure that Six didn't break anything.

Or any one . She still had that gun, right?

"What are you doing here?" Six exclaimed, releasing the moderately-tall man down to the floor with a thump. "Last I'd heard, you were still living on Chandrila? Did it get you too?"

Kevin blinked. Wait - that was right. Four's dimension had the weirdly backward names. So the man was 'Baljeet Tjinder', not the other way around. She'd need to get a better handle on this thing, really. It was just flat-out annoying.

"What are you talking about?" Baljeet asked, rubbing his arms furiously.

"Oh, don't give me that 'Jeet!" Six laughingly replied, playfully shoving him, sending him stumbling backwards and down onto the couch that was luckily just behind him. "I'm just so glad to-"

"Six," Kevin interrupted. "This… is not the Baljeet Tjinder you're looking for."

Six turned to her, for a moment appearing confused, but then a light of understanding crossed her face. "Oh, duh! I'm so stupid-" She hastily turned back to Baljeet Tjinder and grimaced. "I'm so sorry! You - you look a lot like a friend from back home and I completely forgot about the whole alternate-universe thing and, oh no, you'll still help us, right?" For a moment she looked genuinely worried that Baljeet Tjinder would kick them out, but then her face hardened slightly and her hand slid back to rest just above the large lump that was not-so-inconspicuously concealed under her clothes. "I mean - you will help us, of course."

"I - what?" Baljeet spluttered, pushing himself up from the couch. "What's gotten into you? Did something happen to your mind again?" He looked over at Kevin, who waved and smiled, and internally blamed herself for not anticipating that Six's… unusual nature would no doubt lead her to react in a very erratic way and alter her hopes of being able to resolve their problem in a diplomatic way

Instead, this conversation was… going to be interesting, she could already tell.

He rubbed his eyes. "Why are there two of you?"

"It's a long story," Six spoke up. "But to make it short, bad things happened, and I learned about your infinite knowledge and so me and Kevin here tracked you down to make you tell us how to undo those bad things so we can get home again."

"My - my what?" Baljeet raised his voice slightly. "Ginger, what exactly is going on here? Why are there two Candaces in our living room?" He paused. "Did you run afoul of a Molecular Splitter or something?"

"A what?" Six shook her head. "No, look. Long story short - since I'm sure you're not used to having something happen and not knowing about it - me and Kevin are from a different universe. Well, we're each from our own universes. And this is Candace Four's universe. So I guess to you, Four would just be 'Candace', kinda like I'm just 'Candace' back home."

Ginger - since that was apparently the woman's name - had returned from the front door and was lurking near the entrance of the living room. "I was hoping you could tell me what this was all about," she said.

Baljeet shook his head. "I… have no idea. Candace Flynn from a different universe is here coming to to me for help to get home? I… what?"

Kevin heard hushed whispers coming from across the living room, and turning, she could see three small heads peeking about behind a wall. She smiled awkwardly and waved at the children, which only redoubled the rapidity and intensity of the whispering.

"Yes, that's the gist of it," Six insisted. "I know you might think that Palpatine's got the lightsaber, but I swear I'm telling the truth. And then I ran into an Almordian Vanksloth who told me that you knew everything in the universe, and I knew that I had to find you - because, knowing everything, you'd also know how to get me back." She paused. "And One and Two and Three and Five and Seven and Kevin, too. Can't leave them hanging either." Six suddenly got a faraway look in her eyes for just a moment, but blinked and it faded.

"I might… what? And you… huh?" Baljeet seemed to be having trouble understanding - not that Kevin could blame him. "You are from another universe? And there is - there is more of you?"

"Yes," Kevin broke in, trying to take control of the situation. "It's okay. Six is… hard to understand sometimes. Her dimension is… a lot different from either yours or mine and it makes it hard. But yes - the 'Candace Flynn' you know is still here. We call her 'Four' because, well, Two made us but that's beside the point. Which is that we're all from different dimensions and we would greatly appreciate your invaluable contribution in helping us return to our homes."

"My - my contribution?" Baljeet blinked. "Why would you think that I could help? You are both from different dimensions and there is more of you? Do - do Phineas and Ferb know this?"

"Because," Six repeated in a condescending tone, as one might use with a child - like little Candace One. "I met the exalted one of the high council of Almordia and she told me all about how you know everything about the whole universe? Sheesh. The Baljeet I know doesn't know everything and he's still way smarter than you."

"Everything?" Baljeet raised his eyebrows until they were almost touching his hair. "Why would you think that - wait, the exalted one of the high council of Almordia ?" He shook his head. "What does 'Space Adventure' have to do with any of this?"

"What?" Six echoed. "I haven't been on a space adventure. At least, not for a long time. Last time was before Tyrria was born - like 10 ABY, I think. Though it depends on how you define 'adventure' in this universe, I guess. With a broad enough definition, it'd be a lot more recently."

"Ten what?" Baljeet echoed.

"Don't even try," Kevin spoke up, waving her hand. "Six's dimension has some completely different date-and-time system. It's… completely impossible to understand."

"Is not!" Six retorted. "It's actually really easy - the number of years either before or after the Battle of Yavin. Which is a lot less arbitrary than 'two thousand and whatever', in my opinion."

"Right," Kevin nodded. "But it's not particularly relevant , is it?"

"I…" Six paused. "No. Okay, whatever." She turned back to Baljeet. "The point is, you know everything. You'll help us get home, right?" She patted that lump under her clothes again, as if reassuring herself that it was there. "You will."

"Do Phineas and Ferb even know about this?" Baljeet asked. "And why on Earth do you think that I know everything?"

"Because that's what the Vanksloth said?"

Kevin frowned. This was starting to confirm what she'd feared - that Six had somehow misinterpreted something in a conversation at the theater and that Baljeet Tjinder didn't know everything after all. Because, really, knowing everything ? The idea was absurd. She'd gone along with Six purely because this was a different dimension, after all, so you never knew for sure, but she'd never been confident in the plan.

And now it looked that she was about to be proven right after all.

"The Vank-" Baljeet shook his head again. "Again, what does 'Space Adventure' have do with all this? You do realize that there's no such thing as a Vanksloth, right?"

"What?" Six asked. "But - but I saw one! And she specifically told me that she wasn't a Twi'lek - that she was a Vanksloth instead. How can you say that they don't exist? You're supposed to know everything! She called you a 'level sixteen'. Whatever that means."

"I - what?" Baljeet shook his head. "Look, okay." He paused. "You are from another universe?"

Six nodded, and Kevin followed suit. This was progress. Kevin had to say she was surprised the man had managed to grasp it so quickly in the first place.

"Alright." He took a deep breath. "I do not know what universe either of you are from, or how different it is from this one. But I can assure you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that in this universe, my universe, there is no such a thing as a Vanksloth. They are fictional characters, no more, no less. And I can most definitely assure you that I do not know everything."

From somewhere behind Kevin, in the direction of that dark-haired woman she was pretty sure he'd called 'Ginger', she heard a snort, as if someone was struggling to contain laughter.

"But - but I saw one!" Six protested. "You can't say they don't exist if I saw one - and literally just an hour ago in that spaceport! The one across from Four's building!"

"I do not know." Baljeet shrugged. "I mean, Space Adventure Twenty-Three is premiering in the theaters today, so maybe you saw someone in costume? But I can assure you that there is no such actual thing."

"Wait a second," Kevin jumped in. "You think that building was a spaceport ?" When Six nodded uncertainly, she shook her head. "Six, that was a movie theater ." No wonder Six was so confused about everything. You know, none of this would likely have ever happened had Six been able to read in the first place. If they were going to be here for a long while, that might be something they ought to set about remedying.

"You were in the downtown theater?" Baljeet rejoined. "Then yes, I would say you doubtlessly saw a person in costume."

"In costume?" Six echoed. "A disguise?" It looked as if she was having trouble processing the concept. For a second Kevin thought that maybe the idea of costumes was something that wasn't present in her dimension, and that she'd have to explain it or something. But no, that was not the case.

A look of contempt and anger spread across Six's face, and her fingers tapped a pattern into her thinly-hidden space gun. "So that was just some random person in a costume - and they lied to me? Oh, Sithspit ! That's - that's maddening. Ugh." She clenched her fists. " Smeg . Kriff ! What kind of snarkin trollop would think that this was - was acceptable?"

Baljeet just stared, and Kevin couldn't really blame him. This was… pretty much what she'd been afraid of on some level, if she was being honest. Sure, there was a chance that it wasn't going to happen - that Six's crazy story should be proved true - but it hadn't been a very likely chance

Six grit her teeth and exhaled long and loud. "I don't mean to be so insulting, but - ugh! - they deserve it."

"I - no, yeah. That is okay?" Baljeet paused awkwardly. "I am a level sixteen Space Adventure Trivia master - but that is only to do with the Space Adventure movies. It has really no effect at all on what I really know about the real world."

"Movies?" Six looked dumbfounded at the word, and Kevin internally sighed. Here was yet another difference in their dimensions, apparently.

Baljeet looked just about to say something else, but Kevin was far and away used to this by now. "Yes," she quickly jumped in. "Movies. Uh…" What was the simplest way she could explain this? "They're, like, what results when you record something with a recording device and play it back on a screen. Not necessarily all true, either. The ones that aren't we generally call 'fiction'. Which in itself means-"

"I know what 'fiction' means," Six growled. She shook her head. "And based on what you're telling me, it seems your 'movies' are just another name for 'holofilms'." She threw her arms up in the air. "Well, this was just a massive waste of time, then. Shas'mink. Just… shas'mink. That's all." She shook her head. "I'm sorry for being so rude, but I really thought we were getting somewhere here."

"Well," Baljeet said cautiously after a moment of silence. "I may not know everything, but I do know a couple people who might be able to help you anyway."

Since Six had taken to pacing around the living room, muttering under her breath, Kevin decided it might be time for her to take over the conversation on her… counterpart's behalf. "Who?"

"Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher," he replied. "If anyone can help you get- what?" He stopped awkwardly as Kevin began shaking her head.

"I mean, they're already trying to help," Kevin pointed out. "But Six - well, we - figured we might be able to accelerate the process by recruiting someone all-knowing to help." She sighed. "Six and I… come from dimensions where humans are not the only sentient species. So… it's different."

That was all she was willing to say on that subject. It may have only been a weak defence of Six's jumping to conclusions, but treading any farther reminded her off the whole 'meat' thing that went on in this dimension, and that really turned her stomach. She wasn't going make herself sick over it again if she could avoid it.

"Well, it is not just humans in this dimension either," Baljeet replied.

To which Six perked up suddenly, the intense fire that had burned in her eyes only seconds ago mostly faded. "What? I haven't seen anyone that's not a human aside from Four's Perry and that rotten no-good-" she cut herself off and whispered something to herself. "It's fine. I shouldn't be mad. I doubt they knew what they doing, right? Phineas wouldn't get this mad. I shouldn't either." She took a deep breath and put on a remarkably forced-looking smile. "I guess it'll be okay."

"Well," Baljeet resumed uncertainly. "It is pretty much only humans on this planet. But if you go to other planets, there is many other species of sentient non-humans. The Martians or the Meapians, for example, or those ridiculous whalemingoes."

"Could the Meapians help get us home?" Six asked, suddenly eager. "What's their society like?"

"It is, ah," he hesitated. "Cute-based."

"What based?" Kevin was the one who asked it this time, purely because that was answer she'd never in her life expected. Did he just say-

"Cute-based," Baljeet repeated. "Their whole planet runs off this substance known as Cutonium and cuteness. In fact, Cutonium is the solid essence of cuteness in concrete form, which probably helps basing a civilization on it."

"I see." Six shrugged. "That's… unique, I guess. But I suppose that they wouldn't be much help then?"

"Well, their technology is far more advanced than ours, even now. But… we essentially have no way to get in touch with them, short of flying out to the planet directly."

Six frowned. "And how long would that trip take in hyperspace?"

"In what?" Now Baljeet sounded confused. Which was just great, considering that Kevin had no idea how to translate this from Six-talk into Normal-talk. "What is hyperspace anyway?"

"I… don't know exactly how it works," Six admitted. "It's like… you travel faster than light and drift into another dimension or something, letting you get from place to place without having to actually travel the distance between them, or something. Phineas could explain it better."

"I… see." Kevin tried to comprehend what had been just been said, but utterly failed.

Baljeet, on the other hand, seemed to be having no such issues. "Taking advantage of wrinkles in spacetime for pseudo-teleportation? I mean, that is an option, I guess. I do not think that would be necessary, though. The planet of Meap is only about eleven light years away. Phineas and Ferb are capable of the construction of rockets with a maximum speed of over a hundred light years per hour - at least, they were in their childhood. I do not know if they are still capable of such feats, but it is not unlikely that if we actually intended to travel there, we would not have to bother with other dimensions at all."

"So why don't we do that, then?" Six asked. "Wouldn't that be the best option, especially if their planet is more developed than this one? Not that that would be particularly hard. I've seen places on the Outer Rim more developed than this place." She paused. "No offence, of course."

"You can't be serious?" Kevin protested. Even as the words came out of her mouth, however, she could tell by Six's body language alone that the woman was indeed serious - dead serious. That was… distressing.

"Well, I doubt it would help that much," Baljeet spoke up. "Although their technology is generally more advanced, it is also all cute-based. And they, as far as I know, do not possess the capabilities of accessing other universes entirely."

"Oh." Six's smile fell. "And the other species you mentioned? Martians and whale… somethings?"

Baljeet shook his head. "If you think our planet is 'backwater', then you would be most disappointed by the state of Mars and the whalemingo planet. They would be no absolutely no help at all."

"I… see." Six's face contorted into a grimace. "So what can we do, then? I really don't want to just sit around and wait."

Baljeet shrugged, and looked to be choosing his words carefully. "If Phineas and Ferb are already on the case, there is not much else you or I could do, in any case." He paused. "Does Candace know about you two?"

"Yes, replied Kevin, nodding. "The one you call 'Candace' - the one from this dimension - we call 'Four' because, well, she's number four. There… are a lot of us."

"Eight, to be exact," Six jumped in. "One's a little girl, but then you have Two and Three and Four and Five and Six - that's me - and Seven and Kevin." She gestured at Kevin near end, and Kevin could tell by the look on Baljeet's face that he was confused again.

"I assumed that the reason you all had numbered each other was that, as spatio-temporal duplicates, you all possessed the same name." He frowned. "But why Kevin?"

Kevin only shrugged in reply. "In this dimension, male and female names are swapped from the way they're supposed to be. So I'm Kevin, because really, 'Candace' is a boy's name."

"I… see. Huh." Baljeet looked thoughtful. "That is certainly unique, at the very least. So there are eight of you, all from separate dimensions. How… interesting."

"Yes, very much so," Kevin droned, although 'interesting' wouldn't have been her exact choice of word. Well, far be it from her to contradict their current host. "Some of the dimensions are way different. And some… less so." She wondered momentarily if she should tell him about the… unique lifestyle choices of Six and Four and Three, but decided against it. This was Four's home dimension, after all, and he likely didn't know about Four's… relationship in any case.

It did seem to be the sort of thing one would try to keep under wraps, for sure. It would likely be in everyone's best interest - hers included, given she was depending on Four's Pe- Phineas and Ferb to get her home. And Candace Three, apparently, but the same thing basically applied there as well.

They were all in enough trouble as it was - Kevin didn't want to make any more if at all possible. It would just make this whole situation more complicated. Not to mention that she didn't particularly want to get lumped in with Five and Seven either. Those two… did not exactly glow with friendliness, that much was for sure.

"So, what now?" Six spoke up again.

Kevin blinked. "You're asking me?"

"I am." Six nodded. "You came along with my plan, so it's only fair I return the favor if you have one too. And it's not like I really have any other ideas." She plopped down on the couch and sighed. "I just wanted to get home. I miss Phineas and the kids. I'm sure that this would be a great adventure were they here too, but they're not and… it's just complete mynock muffins. I just about can't take it."

Baljeet turned slightly and eyed Six. Kevin shook her head and hastened to cover up for her counterpart's slip of the tongue. "Yes, I would say I'd miss nieces and nephews and other family members too." There, that made it sound like Six was referring to her brother's kids (which she was, of course, depending on how you looked at it) rather than to her own, without explicitly stating that either she nor Six were referring to said family members or had them in the first place. "It's certainly unfortunate that we are trapped here, but we can't give up hope. I'm sure we'll get home eventually."

She said that with as much conviction as she could muster, but that still wasn't much. She was a realist, a practical person, and as such these obstacles standing in between her and her home loomed frighteningly large over top of her.

All she could really do was wait and hope that Four's brothers were indeed able to do what they said they were. That was really the only option.

"The way I see it," she finally said aloud. "Pet-Phineas and Ferb know far more about this sort of thing than I do. Or Baljeet Tjinder, apparently. No offense intended, of course."

He rolled his eyes. "None taken."

"So I don't really see any option for us except to wait for them. Maybe go back to Four's building and see if they have something that we can do? And who knows - maybe they'll have something after all." She cleared her throat. "What I'm saying is I don't think that we're gonna be able to achieve much on our own."

"Indeed," Baljeet chimed in. "I can certainly relate. If you wish to achieve the impossible, the best you can do is help Phineas and Ferb as they do so. It is… not an alien concept to me."

"Besides," Kevin continued. "At least we're in decent hands. Who else could've managed to build a hydroelectric generator or a mostly-functional helicopter that actually managed to fly - as just kids?"

"Or a vaporator!" Six chimed in. "Phineas tells me that on Tatooine, he and Ferb managed to enhance a vaporator to such an efficiency that it could collect more water in ten minutes than an ordinary one could get in ten days. Not to mention their giant hamster habitat for womp rats or solar-powered sandcastle machine."

"Yes," Kevin nodded, though she was unsure of the meaning of more than one of those words. "Precisely. So if anyone can get us home, it'd be them, in all likelihood. And if we want to help, we might as well go ask what we can do, rather than run off on our own."

"I… suppose that's true," Six relented, pulling herself off the couch. "Well… it was interesting to meet you, Baljeet Four, I guess. I do wish you knew everything, though."

"As do I." He nodded. "I have to admit, I did not expect this either. After last year, I thought that things might go back to normal for a while - well, normal for their standards - but I suppose I was wrong."

Kevin frowned, but decided against asking him what had gone on 'last year'. It'd probably end up being another long story that they didn't really have time to hear, nor that she was particularly interested in hearing anyway.

"So we're going back to the spacescraper, then?" Six repeated. "Fair enough. Maybe there we can get something to eat. I'm starving. I could really go for some ahrisa right about now."

Kevin's stomach rumbled uncertainly at the mention of food. She swallowed, remembering very clearly just what kind of food was served in this dimension. What were the chances that'd she be able to find something actually edible here? The lingering queasiness still lurked in her gut from this morning made her very insecure about trying to find something to put in her mouth in this strange, strange dimension.

Six half-turned towards the door, and then paused. "Can somebody summon one of those ground-taxis again?"

"A what?"

"Just a taxi," Kevin explained. "Look, Six, everything drives on the ground here, except airplanes and spacecraft. You don't have to keep specifying 'ground'. People'll just assume that's what you mean."

"Right." Six nodded. "Very well. Summon a g- a taxi, then." She smiled slightly. "I'll tell you what. This'll make one heck of a story when I do finally get home."

Kevin frowned. Aside from Petra and Fern, she could hardly see anyone believing her telling this story. Wilma would trust her, of that she was confident, but he'd still be incredulous - not that she would really be able to blame him either way. But it did mean that aside from that small group of three, no one would ever hear this story.

Which was honestly fine with her either way. She just wanted her life back.

"I can do better than that," Baljeet said. "I will take you back to FFI myself. I would… like to talk to Phineas about this anyway."

"Fair enough." Kevin smiled her usual smile and almost caught herself shifting her posture so as to let the cameras get her good side. "Thank you."

A boy who couldn't have been much younger than little Candace One emerged from the hallway attached to the living and approached Baljeet hesitantly. "Dad, can we come with you?"

But Baljeet shook his head. "No, Karan, I… do not know exactly what might happen and would not want…. anything to happen."

The boy - Karan - seemed disappointed, but turned to leave, while hissing 'I told you so' to someone as he exited into the hallway again.

"And what do you think might happen?" another voice came, startling Kevin slightly. Oh, right - she'd forgotten that woman was still standing there watching them. What was her name again?

Baljeet frowned. "I do not know, Ginger. But you remember what we found out last time something happened with Candace Flynn and unnatural dimensional activity. I would… rather not have that happen again. If you know what I mean."

"Oh." Ginger made a slight face. "I… see. Yes. That makes sense."

Baljeet nodded solemnly and Kevin wondered what they were talking about, but decided it was none of her business anyway.

"You have kids?" Six suddenly asked. "That's awesome. Baljeet from back home doesn't have any. He, uh, well, last I heard from him was getting awfully close to some Twi'lek, but you know how those things go." She shrugged. "Not that I can say anything, I suppose. It's been a few months anyway."

"Yes…?" Baljeet seemed uncertain, but cleared his throat anyway. "Yes, I have children. Seven of them. I… do not know where they all are right now, but that is hardly uncommon at any rate."

Six grinned. "Well, I know how you feel. I swear, I'd thought I'd seen it all, then along came Anakin and, boy, he really knows how to turn the house upside down. And I thought Andrea was a handful when she was young, too." She paused. "I've got four kids."

"Congratulations," he replied. "Good for you."

She nodded, her eyes staring off into space. "Yeah. I don't really remember when we decided to do that… but it felt right. Phineas and I talked about it, though, and we're pretty sure that four is good for now. I don't know if we could handle a fifth." She grinned. "But you never know, do you?"

Kevin winced slightly at the namedrop, which there was no way for her to justify, but, strangely, there was no reaction besides Baljeet's eyes opening slightly wider and him nodding slowly. "I… see. No, you never do."

"Alright, alright," Kevin broke in. "Why don't we just get going back to Four's place. Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, I think it was called?"

"Yes, let us go," Baljeet remarked. "I will just retrieve my keys."

As they followed him back through the house and out the front door, Six turned back to wave over her shoulder to the group of children that had slowly emerged into the living room when they'd left. "Bye, pateesas." She turned back to Baljeet and smiled. "They're adorable."

Baljeet had stopped to bid his wife goodbye, and nodded. "Thank you." He resumed his stride, leading them back out of the house and onto his driveway, where a fairly nice car was waiting - the one they'd seen when they pulled up in the taxi.

"Gunnery seat!" Six called out randomly.

Kevin simply ignored it, and after a strange look or two, Baljeet shrugged and did the same. Kevin climbed into the back seat, and Six planted herself in the passenger seat up front. As Baljeet pulled out of the driveway and back onto the road, the blinds of the front windows of the house were shoved aside and a group of small faces peered out at them.

Kevin smiled to herself. Neither she nor Wilma had ever wanted kids, but this Baljeet's kids were pretty cute looking. Although she had to admit she might feel differently if she'd had to birth and raise them.

She could feel herself drifting off to daydream-land again as they rode along, and blinked rapidly to avert it. She didn't want to, not just yet. They were still a little bit to far from home. Once safely back, she could daydream all she wanted. Until then, they had to get back to FFI and see what could be done by them to help get back.

Six let out a strangled exclamation at something passing by, jarring Kevin momentarily.

She rolled her eyes at the woman's rambles and stared aimlessly out the window again. She wondered what had gone on in the office building while they'd been away. Whatever had happened, unless it'd involved coming up with a working way to get them home, couldn't have been that exciting, right?


	14. Unexpected Blood Bonds

For someone whose personality was riddled with neuroses and insecurities, Candace Four had still clung to a lot of false hopes in her lifetime.

It wasn't even that she hadn't known them to be untrue. Like that hope that if only she used her phone camera, or taken a piece of the Big Idea of the day for herself, or just ran a little faster, her brothers would be busted. She'd always hoped that as a teenager and nothing ever came of it.

Oh, and then there was that hope that if only she'd keep all girls and other temptations away from him, Jeremy Johnson would stick with her forever. And it was better to not get started on the hope that if she just treated Stacy Hirano to ice cream once in a while the girl would forget all the times Candace had stood her up for either Jeremy or busting. Really, she'd skirted so close to a cliff edge when it came to almost losing Stacy as a friend, and that was before the whole 'I'm dating my brother' thing entered the equation.

Looking back with hindsight, it was incredible to realize how relaxed everyone around her had always been – Jeremy, as she'd known at the time, Phineas, as she knew now, but also people like Stacy and her mother. They might get tired of her antics but they never abandoned her, not even over committing incest. (Granted, in Stacy's case the fact that Perry had given her forewarning well in advance would obviously have helped a lot.)

But in spite of that kindness that had been shown to her, there were a lot of false hopes in Candace's life that had backfired spectacularly. And the idea that if only she would get home again, everything surrounding these crazy counterparts of herself would be all right was most definitely one of them.

Just giving all of them a place to sleep last night had been difficult enough, and then, of course, there had been the conversation she'd needed to have with Phineas before going to sleep. She could have seen that one coming from a mile away, and it had even been enjoyable to just be there with her brother, in the warm comfort of his embrace, beneath their familiar blankets and in their familiar bedroom, almost allowing her to imagine that the adventure was over and she was just telling him the most interesting anecdotes. But of course the adventure was still very much on-going.

The morning had gone… all right, all things considered – for one, Five and Seven hadn't made nearly as much of a scene as she'd expected them to. (Or so she hoped, at least. She didn't know what had happened at Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, and although Phineas hadn't called her or texted her apart from an acknowledgement of her own message about heading over, that didn't prove that there had been no incidents. Especially considering Phineas' character – she was half-expecting to see him with a black eye thanks to Five losing her temper, which he would of course not think was worth mentioning at all.)

But Two's constant paranoia was getting on her nerves, Xavier and Amanda had reported that One was deeply traumatized (and even if she knew that her younger self was never going to take well to her choice to start a relationship with her brother, the fact that Candace One was sodistressed about it still stung) and Kevin, who'd seemed so calm and cool about everything yesterday, had ended up freaking out over Perry and eating meat.

And just when it seemed like Six was the only normal one around, she would do crazy things like not knowing how to read, questioning the year, or even randomly running off.

Four exchanged an exhausted look with Ferb as they walked down the stairs together, having forced encouraged One to walk in front of them so that at least she wouldn't run off too. Ferb might not be the brother she was in love with, but she felt reassured that he was there nonetheless. His utterly unperturbed demeanor made her feel slightly more at ease with the whole situation, even if she knew that deep down he might be freaking out as well. That was the great thing about her stepbrother – unless a situation got extremely serious, it was impossible to tell whether he was panicking.

Before opening the door into Phineas' lab, she took a brief moment to re-evaluate the priorities in her head. Doing everything she could to help Phineas get the others home – very important. Making sure everyone stayed where they were and didn't get into fights – again, important. Figuring out why all these other versions of her were different ages, or why their Phineases had had different educations – not very important (though potentially something she could focus upon just in case a conversation got awkward again). Trying to keep Three away from Phineas so that he wouldn't realize that he could have had someone better…

…well, that wasn't unimportant . Just, you know, not particularly constructive. They really needed Three right now, and Four couldn't help but still feel a little guilty for the way she'd treated the other woman in the non-dimension. Which Three had apparently gotten over completely already, because in addition to all those other traits of Phineas she'd managed to acquire, she had somehow achieved his saintly patience and forgiveness, too. How was it possible for a person - a Candace, even - to be that perfect?

The three of them walked into the laboratory, and Candace Four stopped a few steps away from the entrance to glance over her shoulder. She was… a little disappointed, to be honest. Where she had been hoping that One would look astounded or at least a little impressed at what Phineas and Ferb had constructed, instead she gave it only a casual glance before settling herself in a comfortable chair. Four gave Ferb an almost apologetic look before proceeding.

Phineas and Candace Three were at the corner of the lab next to the room which Phineas had accidentally used to trigger that link to another dimension all those months ago, and they were completely embroiled in a debate about quantum physics which Four listened to for five seconds only to give up on it. Fortunately, the other new arrival did know what they were talking about, and when Phineas made his usual gesture for a screwdriver or a wrench or… whatever he needed right now, Ferb was there to give it to him. Candace watched him use it with a smile on her face.

Five, four, three, two, one…

"Oh, hi Ferb!" Phineas looked up and grinned. "I hadn't heard you come in, actually. And hi, Candace." Her partner gave her a loving smile. "Where are the others?"

"Little me is over there, reading a book" Candace Four replied, waiting a moment for One's inevitable "hey!" before proceeding. "Six saw something outside and ran off after it, and Kevin went after her to get her back. We just walked on at first, figuring that they would come back, but…" She shot an inquisitive look towards the staircase. "I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't have let them run off like that. They could get lost very easily here."

Phineas nodded. "I can't blame them for being curious, but you're right that that's not a risk we would want to take. Maybe we could build something that would allow us to track them down?" Three wordlessly handed him a piece of paper which had been repurposed as a blueprint (although to be honest, that was how all papers in Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated inevitably seemed to end up). "Wow, that's awesome! Did you make that just now?"

Three shrugged. "It occurred to me earlier, actually, but I did write this down just now. I should be able to reconfigure my phone to track down the others, presuming the differences in our quantum ion signatures are not too distinct. Unless you want to make a separate device for it, of course. And it wouldn't work for Seven, given her status as a temporal anomaly."

Four almost instinctively took a step back, especially when she caught Ferb giving her a curious look. Phineas smiled as he turned to his brother, although there was something off about his smile. "Apparently Candace Three here can build the same things we do, from insta-transporters to rollercoasters that go into the fifth dimension – referring to dimensions as pertaining to the more general spatial sense, of course, rather than the ones out there in the multiverse that are perhaps more relevant to our current quest – anyway, all that stuff that we can do, she can do too. It's am – I mean, I think it's pretty cool."

Candace Four caught her brother looking at her, and she attempted to force a smile onto her face while simultaneously sending the green-eyed monster back to whatever place it came from (her heart, probably). In the meantime, Ferb stared at Three and blinked appreciatively.

Three just shrugged. "I didn't think it was anything special until I came here, really" she replied. "I mean, of course it's special, because lots of people can't do it, but it's a special thing that's unique for our family . I did spend some time when I was young trying to bust you guys rather than inventing, but that's always been just a phase for me."

Honestly, Four knew Three probably didn't mean anything with it, but the way Three was saying that was once again making her feel quite insecure about herself, and… resentful. She resented her other self. Which was bad enough, because hadn't Three mentioned all that stuff about withdrawal, and that sounded harsh enough, so even if Three might be better than her in so many ways at least she also had drawbacks to contend with.

'At least' she also has drawbacks to contend with? What do you mean, 'at least'?

Well, you know… it's not exactly fair if she has all the benefits of being able to do everything that Phineas can, and we don't, is it?

I don't believe you! Are you really so insecure and possessive that you're relieved if another version of you, someone who hasn't done a thing to hurt you and who's only been helping you, is suffering ? Phineas loves you, you know – although he might stop doing so if he knew you just thought that!

Hey, I didn't mean it like that!

I know that and you know that, but if that had been a verbal slip rather than a mental one, you would get your comeuppance for it all the same!

Four sighed. Three was probably the most relatable of all these other Candaces, and it simply wouldn't do to antagonize her for something she didn't deserve. She would simply have to cope with it. Maybe talk to Phineas about it tonight, if she could work up the guts for it.

A sudden clamor outside of the room distracted her from those thoughts, as it did with all the others. Even little Candace One looked up as another Candace stormed in through the door of the staircase. Almost instinctively, Four's brain got to work. One and Three were here, Two looked entirely different anyway, Six carried herself differently because she was still getting used to normal clothes, which left Kevin, Five and Seven. It probably wasn't Five, because she was quite familiar with Five's mannerisms by now (far more than she would have ever wanted to be) and Five simply looked slightly different, and come to think of it…

Then the Candace glitched.

Four scowled. Of course the universe had to provide the answer at that moment. She'd been so close to guessing it on her own.

Candace Seven came to a halt in front of Phineas, and Four was about to take a protective step towards him when she saw Three do the same. Fortunately, her mind was able to focus on 'anyone protecting Phineas is good' rather than 'did it have to be Three', so that was progress, right?

Phineas and Ferb just stared at the newcomer, who was giving all of them death glares. If she had been Two, she probably would have slammed her stick against the floor at that moment, but since she wasn't she simply spoke up. "You can build some kind of dimension tracer, right?"

Phineas frowned. "Well… yes? I mean, we've been trying to build a device that will access the dimensions each of you is from in order to help you all get home." He smiled. "I mean, that is kind of the point of all of us being here."

Seven rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant, you dork" she said, and coming from her lips that mild-insult-turned-casual-term-of-endearment suddenly sounded very scathing indeed. "I want to find out whether I'm from the same dimension as any of the others. Because as you might know, I'm a temporal anomaly, and it only just occurred to me that the version of myself that stole my life could be any one of your sister's counterparts. Think you can do that for me, or is it suddenly too hard?"

Although her long-standing rivalry with Five had allowed her to ignore it until now, Four had to admit that Seven was actually even more insufferable than Five was. Even Phineas didn't look unaffected, but he still gave her an apologetic look. "Well, like you said, you're a quantum anomaly" he replied. "That means that you don't show up on any trackers or scanners devised for that purpose, so we can't compare your signature with that of, say, Four or Three."

"And thank heaven for that" Three muttered so softly that only Four, who happened to be standing near to her at the time, could catch it. Now that was something she could agree with her smarter counterpart on. Although it was possible – though not very likely – that the mess in front of them was a direct alternate to either of them, she definitely didn't want to hear it confirmed.

Seven blinked. "What the – that's it? That's all you have to say? Oh, you've got to be kidding me! You have absolutely no trouble breaking the time barrier or accessing other dimensions just to spread more suffering among innocent versions of your sister, but doing a simple scan is supposed to be beyond you?" She clenched her hands into fists and trembled with rage. "You know, if you were only consistent with what you claimed to be able to do, your stories about entertaining people and 'having fun' could sound plausible. But as always, your inventions only end up benefiting you and hurting me – which is, I suppose, what they were designed to do in the first place."

"Okay, that's enough" Four snapped, stepping forwards and blocking Seven from both Three and Phineas – she didn't think Seven was about to physically attack Phineas, she didn't seem the type for that, but she didn't even want her brother to have to look at this woman. "Even if everything you've told us about your dimension is true, and Phineas and Ferb really erased you from existence – something which I strongly doubt, by the way – then that still gives you no right to insult my Phineas like that."

"Did you happen to forget that if anyone caused anybody suffering back in the day, it would have been us ?" Three added. "We tried to stop him from inventing , which to a person like you would have been the same thing as being stopped from eating or breathing. I suppose that wouldn't apply to this Phineas or your Phineas, per se, but even…"

"I don't even have 'a Phineas'!" Seven exclaimed. She paused for a moment to look around the group that had gathered around her, and let out a harsh laugh. "This is just typical, isn't it. You're all jumping to his defense because he's brainwashed you into thinking that whatever he's doing is right – into entering a relationship with him, no less! So I'll insult "your" Phineases in whatever way I want, because even spending five minutes with this guy has taught me that he's not one iota better than the brothers who ruined me! But ooh no, Phineas is so amazing. Look at all these inventions he put together!" She had walked over to the table Phineas, Ferb and Three had been working at until she entered. "Look at this cool gadget that totally won't blow us to smithereens when turned on! Look at all these calculations for a device that definitely won't bring us home because that would be far too easy."

"Actually Three built that, and I know it's not going to be easy" Phineas replied. "But that's life. Look, Candace Seven, I can see that you don't trust me for whatever reason, but…"

"You've never given me any reason to trust you" Seven scoffed. "Not then, and definitely not now. Come to your senses, people! You especially, One! Do you really think that all this is going to help us home?!" She gave the plethora of tools on Phineas' workbench another look and then swept them aside with her hand, causing everything Phineas had set up to fall off the workbench and to scatter on the ground. "It's worthless, it's dangerous, and if it were up to me I'd rather take my chances wandering the world and waiting for the Mysterious Force or Vanessa's dad to somehow drag me back home, because even that's more reliable than the brother who can't even tell me – YAOW!"

It took Candace Four a moment to realize what Seven was freaking out about, but considering that she was clutching the hand with which she had only just been sweeping aside bolts and wrenches on a wooden workbench which had been used hundreds of times and just wound up getting littered with splinters no matter what she or any of the company's employees did… it wasn't hard to guess. Candace Seven grimaced, clutching her right hand with an intensity that could well end up breaking some of her fingers.

Four wasn't impressed.

"Okay, show of hands everyone" she said calmly. "Does anyone here actually feel sorry for her right now?" She kept her eyes fixed on Seven, whose dark glare didn't bother her for one bit. "Put your hand down, Phineas."

"She is definitely… unique in her vigor" Ferb commented.

"It's… will someone do something about this?" Seven whined. "I'd do it myself, except I don't know where any medical supplies are here, so I'm going to need to count on you for help! And I know you won't do it for my sake, but at least you won't want me to bleed dry on your lab floor, will you?"

Four rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen. It's just a cut in your hand, you know."

Seven glared at her. "Does this look like 'just a cut in my hand'?" she whispered, removing her left hand so that the full extent of her injury became clear. Four's eyes widened as she saw the blood that had pooled up and now fell down to the ground. "I'm thrombocytopenic, you know. My blood just won't clot, and if you don't do anything soon I might as well faint. Shouldn't you know that, from your own experiences? And don't tell me you had Phineas fix it for you. If you let him play with your bloodstream…" Her voice trailed off, and her eyes returned to a more panicky stance as she just stared at the blood that continued to spill out of her wound.

Even Phineas was beginning to get disconcerted now. "Ferb, get the medical kit" he said, his voice trembling. "I – I don't know… Candace?"

Four opened her mouth and closed it again. It was unusual for Phineas to outright ask her for help – she was usually the one asking him for help – but she had no idea what to say. "I… we've got bandages?" she offered. "If you take some of them and just press them hard enough against the wound, then eventually it would stop, wouldn't it?"

"Of course not!" Seven exclaimed. "Like I said, the blood won't clot , and that won't happen no matter how many bandages you throw against it – so unless you want a lot of soaked bandages, please think before you say something next time so that, you know, you'll actually end up being helpful!"

"I – I did think about it!" Four shouted back, embarrassed. "It's not my fault that I'm not used to people having thrombo… blood issues! I was panicking, okay!"

"Oh, sure, you're panicking, so you have to be excused for everything!" Seven snapped back. "What about the woman right here who is almost bleeding to death? Do you have any pity left to spare for me once you're done whining about yourself, or did all that get stamped out from twenty years of living with Phineas?"

"I…" Four stammered, but she knew that saying something wasn't going to help the situation one bit. Because as embarrassing as it might be to admit, Seven was right. She wasn't helping, and she couldn't help here. And for all that Phineas had to be coming up with seven emergency plans in a minute here, he had no idea either. She – wait! – wasn't this something she could simply look up online? Or ask Seven herself about, of course. Because the woman was apparently too busy panicking to think of the fact that she could well provide the answers. Either that, or she was so self-righteous that she was willing to risk bleeding dry because she simply thought that Phineas and Candace should be able to help her on their own. Four wouldn't put it past her.

What to do, what to do…

"Take this."

Four looked up to see an unusually pale looking (she hadn't had an accident herself, had she?) Candace Three hand Phineas a bottle of sorts. "It's a coagulant" she replied softly. "The specific dosage should be specified on the label. Try to apply it as gently to the wound as you can. I'd do it, but I… I'm not feeling up to it right now."

As Phineas followed Three's instructions in front of a scowling and clearly distrustful Seven, who only reluctantly offered up her arm for the purpose, Four took a moment to wonder why Three looked so nervous and insecure all of a sudden. And come to think of it, why had she had that kind of bottle on her, especially on a day like this when they had all been randomly plucked out of their daily lives without being given a moment's preparation? How could she have known anyone might need it? Unless she had brought it along for herself, of course…

Oh.

Oh.

Seven hadn't made the connection yet. Phineas hadn't either – then again, he was preoccupied, so she could hardly blame him for that – but from the look on his face Ferb clearly had, even if Candace Four suspected that her stepbrother had somehow made the link before Three even spoke up. He was that kind of guy, after all.

"What's happening?" One piped up from behind them. Ugh, this was getting so annoying. Didn't One have any sense for the basic idea of 'not meddling in things that aren't your business'? "Are you okay?"

Seven snorted. "I'll live, kid" she muttered. "If you can call it that. I don't suppose you could use any of the blood I just spilled to track down my inter-dimensional identity, could you?"

Ferb cleared his throat. "Actually, I do not believe that would even be necessary at this stage."

The time anomaly in front of them stared at their quiet brother. "What do you mean?" she insisted. "Oh wait, you've already figured it out, haven't you? Of course you have. Classic Ferb. He knows everything, he can do anything, just not when it's actually helpful , because then he shines through his absence. So, what is it? The fact that I have thrombocytopenia and Four doesn't? I don't see how that's helpful as I haven't seen anyone else bleeding thus far – and unless you two have sunk that far in your desire for experiments, I doubt I'm going to. Three's bottle could run out of juice pretty quickly, and then we'd be in…"

Ah. Now she'd caught on.

"You…" Seven stammered, staring at Three. Her eyes narrowed venomously. "You can't be the only one. There's got to be more."

"Did you first discover that you had this at Stacy's birthday party when you were five years old?" Three asked. Her voice almost sounded calm, but there was something about it that told Four that she really wasn't anywhere near to being calm. "Did you originally feel embarrassed because you'd humiliated yourself in front of everyone, but then Stacy's mother helped you get through it, and Stacy felt so sorry for what had happened to you that it helped you two become friends?"

Seven's eyes widened. She glanced over at Candace One, who shook her head. "Nope. That never happened to me."

"This…" Seven clung onto the workbench to recompose herself. "This doesn't prove anything! There are still lots of versions of us out there, so…"

"There certainly are, yes," Phineas said, sounding fairly cheerful and composed as usual, even though Candace could tell that he was still slightly unnerved. "But - well, I haven't really had the chance to find out anything about your life yet," Seven gritted her teeth, "so correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't have the impression that it was any different - before anomalization, that is - from most of ours?"

"It was fundamentally different" Seven snapped. "I was never like Three and Six and your own pathetic sister in any way - I was happily married to Jeremy, and…"

"Ah, see, that's exactly what I thought" Phineas replied, smoothly cutting off the woman who was already very unhappy with him. (Candace took a step closer to her brother so that she could protect him if that should become necessary, but fortunately Seven stayed put.) "That discounts Two, and Six, and Kevin, given the backstories that Candace - my Ca - my sister Candace told about them. So you can't be any of those Candaces. And the 'thrombocytopenia' doesn't fit with my sister, nor apparently with One, so unless Five turns out to have it…"

"Turns out to have what?" another Candace's voice spoke up. Four reassured herself that she probably would have been able to identify her as being Five even if she hadn't directly replied to what Phineas was saying. "Did you guys take a break from inventing to gossip about me? Figures."

"Actually, we were trying to figure out whether Seven and Three are from the same universe, and if Three is the Candace whose timeline superseded Seven's, causing her to end up as a temporal anomaly" Phineas explained. "I don't suppose you have thrombocytopenia, do you? Trouble with blood clotting?"

"I… no" Five murmured, looking at Seven with an almost fearful expression – well, that was something Four could relate to. From the last couple of minutes it had become clear to her that Candace Seven had a tendency to snap, and even if she hadn't been as outspoken as Five had been for much of their stay here thus far, she was undoubtedly far more prone to saying spiteful and downright hurtful things when she did speak up. "I never had that."

"I'm afraid that makes it almost inevitable, then" Phineas said. "I mean, sure, there are undoubtedly other dimensions out there with other Candaces, but every calculation I've made over the past year pertaining to inter-dimensional travel indicates that even, or maybe especially, when it comes to ostensibly natural rifts like this, it only connects dimensions that are relatively close to each other. I could draw up a chart to prove it to you if you want, but basically what it comes down to is that any other dimension you could have originated from that isn't any of the others' is likely to be so different from the rest of us that the rifts wouldn't have brought you here in the first place." He smiled faintly. "But this doesn't have to be a bad thing, you know? At least now you know more about your past and present, and you don't have to worry about us being unable to track down your dimension because you're an anomaly anymore."

"Not a bad thing?" Seven repeated. "Of course you wouldn't see anything bad in me discovering the fact that someone who ended up in a re-relationship with you , of all people, who ended up doing the exact same crazy things you did… was me! I… I…" She tried to speak up, but apparently this out of all things was enough to make her mouth snap shut. Well, Four reflected, she'd long since started hoping that something would be able to catch the Candaces that hated her off-guard one day. It wasn't Five, but this would do. This was great, even. All the disgusted remarks about the lives she, Six and Three lead, all the scathing comments towards Phineas… gone, right?

Because it was impossible to insult someone for being crazy when you knew that exact same crazy was inside you, too.

Seven just glared at them and stalked into the corner of the room, sitting down heavily in the chair One had previously been sitting in and daring the others to look back at her. From the look on her face, Five was considering whether or not to go after her. Candace Four almost smiled. She knew it was petty and immature of her to do so, but oh, this was just too perfect.

"That was… well, that was largely unexpected" Phineas commented, having apparently moved to stand next to her. "It makes me wonder what I did that earned her vitriol in her timeline, but didn't in Three's. I mean, I could have understood it if it had been a completely different version of me, and I know perfectly well that I've messed up around you sometimes in the past… but it just doesn't make sense to me that if I were the same person, in one timeline I'd practically alienate my own sister, and in another she would agree to live a life together with me and have kids together, just like you did."

Four snorted and put a hand on her brother's shoulder. "You're trying to rationalize someone who isn't rational" she replied. "Seven's whole life seems to be based around spite towards you, and she sees the choices we made as ridiculous ones that she never would have made. Well, guess what? She did. Maybe that'll be enough to finally snap her out of that shell of craziness."

"Maybe you're right" Phineas admitted. "But even if there was just a small chance that my other self was complicit, it wouldn't sit right with me. And if you focus on what she did instead, I understand the whole thing even less. I may have only known Three for a few hours, but she never struck me as the type who would bear a grudge against me quite like this. It… it just seems so inconsistent. Like they are two different people, which I suppose they are, but they weren't once." He smiled. "You know, after about three decades of listening to you open up about the things you worry about, you'd figure I would be able to get what makes you – and your counterparts – tick by now."

"That's hardly something you can blame yourself for, Phineas" Four said with a chuckle. "I guess that's just me being inconsistent. But you're right – I hadn't thought of it from that angle yet, but I can't see Three turning out that way either, no matter what different life choices she made. I mean, I suppose the inventing could have gotten to her head – I think it might well have if it had happened to me – but apparently Seven loathes inventing in general, and she was as surprised by the fact that Three could do all that as we all were, and in any case Three seems to have it all under control." She cocked her head sideways. "Hey, where is Three?"

Phineas blinked, and the two looked around to see that the room was suddenly less one Candace. Seven was still moping in the corner with Five having finally walked over and now trying to offer comfort from a safe distance, giving Candace Four a strangely nervous look as she glanced over towards her. Candace One was standing against a wall looking thoroughly confused. Ferb, being Ferb, had started repairing some of the damage Seven had wrought on Phineas' working environment. But Three was nowhere to be seen.

"Bathroom break?" Phineas suggested. "I don't know how long we've been here exactly, but I know it must have been a while."

Candace shook her head. "No… that doesn't feel right." The bathroom break explanation was the easiest one, of course, but something inside her told her that it wasn't true. "I'll go and try to find her" she added, mentally running through scenarios of why and how Three could have run away. "She can't have gone far."

She walked over to the elevator, only to remember as she pressed the knob to go upwards that it was out of order. This was beginning to get reallyfrustrating.

Entering the staircase, Four looked upwards into the abyss of the seemingly endless spiral of stairs in Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. "Three?" she yelled, an element of uncertainty in her voice. "Candace Three?"

For crying out loud, why did that woman have to run away now, of all moments? She knew she was needed, didn't she? After everything that had happened, Three would have to be blind not to realize that Candace Four was telling the truth about her inability to invent in the way she and Phineas and Ferb did. As awkward as it felt to admit it, Four knew that Three was someone they couldn't miss on this project. So for her to run off, right after saving the day because she'd been able to do the one thing none of the others could – provide that coagulant for Seven's bleeding issue…

Four felt tempted to kick herself. Of course. She had seen how pale Three looked when handing over the bottle. Three had obviously been very disturbed about the discovery that she could have been Seven if Seven hadn't gone back in time and caused some minor alteration. Logic dictated that that would be why she'd run off, then.

But logic couldn't explain everything. Being Candace Flynn herself, Four could imagine that hearing that she could have been Seven was intensely frustrating and annoying, but it wasn't enough of a reason to straight-up run off when others depended on her. "Three?" she yelled again. Some part of her wondered why she was so determined that Three was still somewhere in the staircase, either huddled down at a quiet spot or continuously walking upwards without thinking much about where she was going.

It was what she would do, for sure – especially as it was a busy day outside, so going outside for a moment of peace and quiet wasn't very practical. Going for a drive would be a too irresponsible dereliction of her duty, not to mention that Three might not be willing to borrow her car without permission anyway. The alternative, of course, was using the insta-transporter to go somewhere distant, but that had never quite been her thing, not to mention that Three's phone wasn't connected to the network, so how…

Right. Three . Candace had no idea why she kept forgetting that her other self was virtually all-knowing. Three would probably be quite capable of getting a teleportation system to work on her own, so she could be anywhere by now. Maybe she was even still here, but in an invisibility bubble. Or a pocket dimension she'd just created here somewhere (or rather, nowhere – wasn't that how pocket dimensions worked?)

Or maybe Three was still in the building and close by. That was an entirely legitimate possibility, for the simple fact that outside of the staircase, Candace Four still hadn't bothered to check.

She walked out on the main floor and headed over to the front desk. "Kirsty, did you see one of…" She hesitated, knowing very well that whatever she was going to say next would sound crazy. "Did you happen to see someone who… who looked a lot like me? Kind of like a clone?"

Kirsty looked up at her and gave her a confused and vaguely suspicious look. "Do you mean one of your cousins, miss Flynn?"

Cousins? That sounded like a reasonable conclusion Kirsty could have jumped to – but Candace Four supposed that it was more likely that Phineas or one of her other selves had simply told her that as an excuse. Probably one of her other selves, because Phineas had always been a lousy liar – then again, if he'd told Kirsty something, she would probably swoon over him and believe him no matter what he said. "Yes! Of course. My cousins." She cleared her throat. "Anyway, have you seen one of them?"

"You're going to have to be more specific" Kirsty replied. For whatever reason, the younger woman looked a lot more confident than she usually did. It was giving Candace a bad feeling, not unlike the way she'd felt when Five had so suspiciously avoided her gaze downstairs. "I heard that there's, what, seven or eight of them?"

Candace grimaced. "I'm asking whether someone came by just now " she specified. "As in, within the last minute or two. And not the tall one in black with the glasses, the one who keeps scowling, the one who occasionally blinks in and out of existence, or the one who carries a gun around."

Phineas' secretary nodded. "How is this still only just in the top three of the weirdest days I've lived through here" she muttered, almost too softly for Candace to catch. "I think I know the one you mean. She asked where she could have some time to herself, so I sent her to the lobby, because it's usually quiet at this time of day. Maybe it would be for the best if you don't disturb her right now. Also, don't you guys use some kind of numbering system to tell each other apart?"

Four frowned. "How do you know that?"

"Two of your cousins came by earlier to ask me for Mr. Tjinder's home address and mentioned various numbers" Kirsty explained. "I don't remember which ones it was, because I have to admit that I can't tell your family apart. It is your family, not mine. Anyway, I called a taxi for them, so they should be at their destination by now."

Well, that was… odd. The only two versions of herself that could possibly have been were Six and Kevin, and Four had no idea why they would seek out Baljeet at all people. Well, at least it meant that they were in safe hands – Baljeet might be eccentric, but he wouldn't let them wander off any further. Right now, she needed to focus on getting Three back. "Thank you, Kirsty." She walked past her nemesis in the direction of the lobby.

"Hang on," Kirsty said, "didn't I tell you that she probably doesn't want to be disturbed?"

Four gave the girl a look. "Like you just said, Kirsty, it's my family, not yours. So maybe you could stick to your own business and let me handle this problem, okay?"

She didn't wait for the reaction and simply walked onwards to the lobby. Sure enough, Three was sitting in a corner, still looking quite desolate. Four stopped at the entrance, unsure of what to do next. Persuading her counterpart to come back sounded easy on paper, but it was likely to be a lot tougher in practice, particularly since she still didn't quite understand why Three was so upset by this in the first place. Not to mention that she knew she was bad at comforting people. Maybe she should go back and get Phineas to do this for her?

She was about to turn around when Three looked up and caught sight of her. The two Candaces just stared at each other for a few seconds, until Four finally sighed and sat down next to her counterpart.

"So, you found me" Three wryly replied. "I…I shouldn't have run off on you like that. Certainly not without telling you first. I guess that's one way to demonstrate that I really am that crazy, huh?"

Four frowned. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "Look, whatever Seven ended up doing with her life doesn't matter. She's insane, and I can see that's upsetting to you because those are choices you could have taken, but it's pretty obvious that you aren't anything like her."

Three shook her head. "That's what I thought at first, too" she said softly. "Maybe it was false hope, but… you know, seeing her made me wonder whether there was really a version of me out there who was weirder than I was. She fit the bill in every aspect – a temporal anomaly, obsessed with Phineas and Ferb to an extent that doesn't just fit with a normal response to incest that normal people would have… but then I find out that somehow, she is me. And that my one hope for relative sanity turned out to be my worst nightmare."

Candace Four was seriously wondering whether Three was listening to one word she was saying and vice versa, or whether they were just having two entirely separate conversations. "You're not we… okay, scratch that, I can't sell that convincingly" she said. "So you are a little weird. So am I. At least you're weird in a good way, because you can bend space and time to your will and that's bound to make the love or your life care for you all the more. I mean, Seven is crazy, but she hates inventing. She hates our relationships with Phineas. You can't possibly connect the two. They're entirely different kinds of weirdness."

"You actually – genuinely – think I'm weird in a good way?" Three looked at her with a mixture of pity and incredulousness. " Phineas is weird in a good way. I'm… just weird. I told you about this before – when I go without inventing for a certain period of time, I get nausea, throw up, and begin to suffer physical pain in all kinds of ways. My whole life is dominated by fear that someday someone out there will find out that Phineas and I are together, and that everyone else I know will abandon me over it. I never expected that there was someone out there who had made the same bizarre life choices that I had, but even though you have… did you see yourself back in the non-dimension? When Five told everyone that we were in relationships with Phineas? I could barely move a limb. I was terrified. You went out there and fought back. I love Phineas, and I'd never leave him, but in that one moment I was embarrassed and terrified that our counterparts had found out that I was in a relationship with him. Because even though it might feel right for me, I knew no one was going to agree with me on committing incest ." She shrugged. "Well, except you, apparently. And Candace Six, even if her life is so different from ours that I wonder whether it counts."

"Okay, I can't even begin to name the things that are wrong with that" Four replied, leaning backwards in her seat. "First of all, didn't you say that Phineas and Ferb had to deal with all the same withdrawal issues that you had? And all those other emotions – you really think I'm any better at dealing with that than you are? Sure, I might have spoken up against Five and Seven, but that was because they were pushing so hard against me and annoying me, and you know what we do when that happens. I worry about people finding out about my relationship with Phineas. I worry all the time. Do you know why we have that bed that you slept on last night? It's for the remote chance that someone walks up our stairs who doesn't know our secret. That chance barely exists , and yet I worry about it. I worry about everything. I'm not as relaxed as Phineas is, and I don't suppose either of us are. But he chose us, and he stuck with us. I mean, he wouldn't have done that with you if you had really been that crazy – and you aren't, not beyond what's normal for him and Ferb." Somehow it felt strange to admit that, as if by openly denying her counterpart's sullen claims of being crazy she was losing a card she could have played – but Four refused to be that cold and insecure.

Three looked at her and chuckled. "No, I suppose Phineas knows what I'm like" she said. "He knows, and he sticks with me no matter how crazy I am. But as you said, Four, Phineas isn't like us, and he's not like other people either. I didn't tell you how I broke up with Jeremy in my universe, did I?"

Four frowned. "No, but it could hardly have been worse than what I did" she replied. "I basically obsessed with him for weeks when he first went to college, until on one night I finally stood him up on our date, publicly admitted how needy I was around him where he could hear me, and got a family member frozen in ice for a while because I thought she was a threat. After all that, it's a miracle he just told me that we needed some time apart – which, of course, ended up becoming permanent in the long run. Jeremy was always far too patient with me. Not like Phineas, but he was definitely a much better boyfriend for me than I ever was a girlfriend for him." She smiled with the fondness that came with recalling a memory of an old lover, one she no longer had any feelings for but about whom she could remember the good times nevertheless. "So, what's your story?"

Three suddenly looked hesitant, and she turned her head down to look at the floor. "I… in order to ensure that he would take in the knowledge I had so that he wouldn't need to expand his hours at Slushy Burger's and ruin my own grand plan for the future, I basically invented something to… I basically tried to brainwash his free will out of him."

Candace Four stopped. Blinked. Then blinked again. "…okay" she said softly. "I can see how that's worse."


	15. Adrift On The Endless Sea

**A/N:** _This chapter has additional applicable tags to be wary of:_ **Implied/Referenced Major Character Death**

 _No one actually dies "on-screen", as it were, but implications are had and references are made to deaths having taken place elsewhere beforehand. There is, of course, no gore or any such content even so._

 _That being said, we hope you enjoy the story!_

* * *

An awkward silence hung in the lobby of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated the moment after Three had told her story. A story that was only one sentence, but which caught Candace Four off-guard nevertheless. Her other self had tried to brainwash Jeremy? That was… well. Okay, she could see how Three was thinking she had overreacted much more than Four herself had to their ex-boyfriend's departure. For the first time, Candace found herself silent, openly contemplating whether Three's silly idea that she was weirder than the rest of them had something going for it after all.

Candace Three noticed her reaction, of course, and nodded slowly. She wasn't trembling, like Candace vaguely remembered her doing back in the non-dimension (how hadn't she noticed that then?), appearing to be more resigned than embarrassed. "I figured as much" she said softly. "You're free to run away screaming – I'm not going to stop you. Although I suppose this is your building, isn't it? So I guess that means I would be the one who should run." She stood up. "I… I don't know why I told you this, actually. I did tell your Phineas some aspects of the story, but not everything, not in detail. I can definitely understand if you're freaked out and disgusted now, but I still need to get home to my Phineas, because I love him and… well, I don't suppose you're very likely to believe that now, are you?" She slowly started walking forward, in the direction of the room's exit.

It took Candace Four a few moments to come back to her senses, but when she did she shot up and ran over to her counterpart, grabbing her arm. "You're not going anywhere" she said, before realizing that maybe that wasn't quite the right message she wanted to give off to the poor woman either. . "Okay, let me rephrase that. I do not want you to go away. I mean, yes, your story is kind of creepy, but I… well, I would be lying if I said that I could never have sunk that deep."

Three frowned. "Could have, would have, should have" she muttered. "I was the one who did it. The only Candace, probably, because Six seems to have everything in order in her life. Especially given that she's married to Phineas."

There was a tinge of resentment and jealousy in Three's voice, all the more obvious now that Four knew when to look for it. "Yeah, Six is probably more stable than we are" she admitted. "She told me this morning that in her world, she was the one to fall in love with Phineas rather than the other way around when he saved her life on some kind of mission or whatever? That might have something to do with it. But even if I know I'm messed up, and maybe you are too, that doesn't really change anything. Phineas still loves us, and he… well…" She sighed, wishing her brother was here with her. "I'm bad at this. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that no matter what mistakes we made we shouldn't give up on ourselves, and I'm not going to shun you over this. Phineas wouldn't do that, right?"

"Never, most likely" Three admitted. "But like you said before, we're not Phineas."

"No, but…" Four shook her head. "I don't know what you want from me. Yes, I agree that it sounds awful, but you did give me a pretty brief recap and I'm sure it'll sound better if I hear the whole story…"

"It won't. Not much, anyway."

"…and like I said, the fact that you did this doesn't make you any worse than me. I mean, you said you only tried to erase Jeremy's personality, right? And if it would have worked out he probably would have stuck with you, so…" Three cringed. "Sorry. But that is true, you know. So even if you came up with a plan, even if you worked it out, you didn't actually wipe his mind. It never happened. And you know what you wanted to do was wrong, so that's positive in itself."

Three stared at her. "I know, there's hope for redemption. I don't have to die as a super villain. That's great news."

Four sighed. "Okay, now I'm convinced you're being at least partly overdramatic on purpose."

Three smiled faintly. "…maybe a little."

All right, that was progress. "So what if you had some thoughts about wanting things that are kinda messed up when you think about it?" Four continued. "I have those too! All the time! Just this morning I was relieved that you…" She hesitated. "Forget that."

Her counterpart frowned. "You were relieved that I did what?" she asked.

Shoot. Of course Three was not going to let that slip-up go. Candace didn't know what she had been thinking, blurting that out in front of the last person whom she wanted to tell it to – and now she pretty much had to. Because Three had told her her own dark secret, and this was… well, almost as dark, she thought. But she couldn't get out of it now. It just wouldn't be fair to pressure Three to tell her story and not tell her own, and it would probably lead to the woman closing up again. Which was not what she wanted. Why did all this have to be so complicated?

She sat down again, waiting for Three to sit down next to her. "I… Kevin was right about me" she began. "I did know, deep down, that you should be perfectly capable of rebuilding that space-time ripper. I guess that after that explosion I still wasn't a hundred percent sure, but – and that's the thing – I hoped that you weren't capable. Because then you would be no smarter than the rest of us, and you wouldn't be that… that better me that I'd know was out there, and Phineas would come to know about too."

She saw Three giving her a flabbergasted look and raised her hand to stop the other woman from interrupting, at least for now. "And even if I came to terms with that in the non-dimension, when I saw you at work this morning, I still felt jealous of you, and I felt guilty about that because of withdrawals and all those things you mentioned… but somehow, those withdrawals were reassuring to me, because it meant that at least you didn't have it all, you had some disadvantages that came with your inventing capabilities. And I felt awful about that. How can you call yourself crazy, when I'm the one who wanted you to suffer even though you'd done nothing to hurt me, just to make me feel better!"

Candace Three was silent for a moment, and Four's heartbeat sped up. This was going to be it, wasn't it? The moment Three would finally realize how awful she was. And the thing about it was, she still couldn't stop it. She knew how awful it was to resent Three, but she didn't stop doing it. At least she knew about the Jeremy incident now, so she could throw that back at her other self if she really got angry?

…seriously. She had to stop this whole thing with using 'at least' and then following it with horrible thoughts that should never see the light of day.

"It's okay, Candace." She heard Three's voice, and she felt Three's hand on her shoulder. "I can see this is upsetting to you and that you feel terrible about it, but I'm honestly just surprised that you, or anyone, would be jealous of me. Precisely because of those withdrawals. Because of the life I lead, in which every second is absolutely insane." She shook her head. "You don't want my life, Four. No one does. It's absolutely crazy, I'm crazy, and if you knew what it was really like it would put you off me in an instant."

Four frowned. "Maybe. But it wouldn't put Phineas off you – not yours, obviously, and not mine either. I mean, I can't imagine he'd like the whole withdrawal thing, but he wouldn't think you were crazy for it. I… I saw the way you two worked together this morning. He loves the fact that you're there, inventing with him. And that's something that I can't do. For the longest time, I didn't even want to do it. I'm a lawyer, not an inventor, and that's what makes me happy – as cool as the things that Phineas and Ferb built were, it just wasn't my thing, not on a regular basis. But now that I see you do it? I… I want it. Not the withdrawals, of course, but the idea that you can do anything you want to, that the laws of physics don't apply to you. That… that you're worthy." She shook her head. "I feel like I'm a child again. I see something cool someone else has, so I must have it too."

"There's no inventing without withdrawals – at least not in our world" Three replied. "I suppose that if it worked the way it worked in your universe, in which that's… just not a thing for whatever reason, I can't blame you for wanting it." She shook her head. "But why would Phineas enjoying working with me bother you?" She raised an eyebrow in confusion. "You… you don't think I'd want to take him from you, do you?"

Four snorted. "No, I don't – or at least, I don't when I let my common sense do the talking rather than just groundless paranoia. You have your own brother, so I know you don't want mine. But that doesn't mean that Phineas won't see something in you that he knows is lacking in me."

"So what if he does?" Three replied. "Candace, Phineas loves you for who you are." Four nodded with a sigh – she knew that, of course she did, but it was so difficult to accept sometimes. "Unless he fell for us for entirely different reasons, of course. That's not impossible – I was surprised enough to find out that another me who had also fallen in love with her brother even existed. What with my weirdness, I figured I would be the only one."

Four wondered whether Three would ever stop claiming to be weirder than she was – maybe around the time she would stop thinking Three's inventing capacities made her better, so most likely never. "That's… that's strange" she remarked. "Kind of funny, actually. I always thought the opposite thing – that it was so impossible for Phineas and me to get together, and he still overcame the obstacles against it, so what would stop him from doing the same things in other worlds as well? As long as Phineas wanted to be with me – and for some reason, that's something he's always wanted – he would find a way. I imagine that in your world, your inventing thing made the two of you getting together much smoother sailing. You know, after that whole ordeal with Jeremy was over with."

Three frowned. "Smoother sailing?" She shrugged. "Sure, if you call, say, the Mysterious Force almost killing us smooth sailing."

"Wait, what?" Four said, blinking rapidly. "The Force almost killed you? How do you go from falling in love with your brother to that?"

"The same way the Force always gets involved – it came across something Mom would find strange, so it removed it before she could see it" Three explained. "That something was me kissing Phineas the day after he convinced me to give dating him a chance, and the way the Force dealt with it was by dumping us somewhere in the sky, leaving us to fall down to the ground at breakneck speed. If Phineas hadn't managed to keep his composure, we would have died for sure." She frowned. "Don't you know about that? A Mysterious Force, always removing things Mom would think of as strange… don't tell me you've never had to deal with that either."

"Well… yes" Four muttered. "But that was years ago. Back when I was still trying to bust Phineas and Ferb. As soon as I stopped busting them, the Force kind of petered out, I guess? Phineas and I got together when I was seventeen, and I quit busting altogether that November. It took until the first day of summer next year before the Force let up enough to allow Mom to see our project – I'd given Phineas the idea of that day because I was going to turn eighteen soon – and ironically, it happened when we were least expecting it. I think it gradually petered out after that, and when Phineas and I moved out it was pretty much gone. There are still plenty of strange things that happen in Danville, it wouldn't be Danville otherwise, but it's not concentrated on our family anymore."

Three shook her head. "I can't believe this. The Force letting up when we were least expecting it, yes. It gradually petering out, okay. But that happening in the summer in which you turned eighteen? Phineas and I weren't even together yet back then – that wouldn't happen for another year. And it took the Force years and years after that to really lose its teeth." She smiled wryly. "Do you still think my life is better?"

Four smiled, gradually more broadly, until she finally grinned. "No, I guess not. We're just a couple of weirdoes, aren't we?"

"Maybe" Three replied, shrugging. "But I don't think there's any doubt over which of us is weirder."

"I'm beginning to wonder whether that's something you're actually proud of" Four said teasingly. "You know – and I can't believe I'm saying this, and I know I'm being hypocritical because I don't listen to this advice either when Phineas tells me to – but you should relax, Candace. I mean, sure, we're crazy and we have weird relationships with our brother, but I know that everyone I told about it responded positively. Maybe not at first, but in time they agreed not to spill the secret and they came to accept it. Stacy, Ferb, Isabella, Mom and Dad, the kids… heck, even Baljeet and Buford, despite the fact that I'd been convincing Phineas to hide it from them for twenty years or so. I know you don't want the outside world to know, and neither do I, because they would judge us and pounce on us immediately and maybe even get us thrown behind bars. But as long as the ones we care about know the truth and remain close to us, why should we be so stressed about it? I might be wrong about your world, of course, but I know the people who are important in my life, and I am pretty sure they're the same ones who are important in yours, and they're never going to turn you down completely for what you and Phineas did. No matter how terrifyingly real that prospect might look."

Three smirked. "And you say you're not far more able to deal with your relationship than I am?"

"Hey, I told you it didn't happen overnight" Four responded. "It took me a lot of work to get here. We kept this thing from Baljeet and Buford for twenty-five years, and from our own parents for nearly as long. That wasn't Phineas' choice, it was mine, and in retrospect it was probably a stupid choice. But I was just too terrified of anybody finding out."

"I have a hard time believing that, considering how confident you were around Five and Seven when we were in non-dimensional space" Three admitted. "It felt to me that yes, you'd basically made the same choices I made, but you… you dealt with it so much better than I did. Like you woke up one morning and decided that you were in love with Phineas, so you entered into a relationship with him and never looked back."

Four snorted. "Oh, please. You didn't seriously believe that, did you? Like I said, it took Phineas ages to win me over, and even when he had there were days when not a moment went by without me doubting whether I was doing the right thing. Until a few years ago I had habits of going out for a drive in my car on afternoon in the weekends, just to get away from all the craziness. And when I was swapped with Five, I spent most of that week trying to prove that they were the ones who had messed up, just so that I would know that I wasn't the crazy one. I've always tried to prove that Phineas and I were destined to be together, simply because I couldn't deal with the alternative."

"If Phineas and I… Phineas and us, I guess… were destined to be together, he probably wouldn't have been our brother in the first place" Three replied. "I don't know how destiny works or if it works, but I do know it doesn't involve incest."

There was a twinkle in Four's eye as she responded. "Well, you don't know that. I mean, if we hadn't been brother and sister, would Phineas ever have fallen in love with us? Would we have ever given this guy a couple of years younger than us the time of day and the chance to show how much he loves us?"

"Again, if we were soul mates, our ages wouldn't have been that far apart anyway" Three said. "Although I suppose that we could simply have gotten together later, in our twenties or something. Which would work in more than one way, since I doubt that Phineas becoming a father at age twenty was meant to be."

"You had Amanda when Phineas was twenty?" Four repeated. "That's… wow." She'd been together with her brother at the time, of course, in every sense of the word, but having children at that age was not something she would have been ready for. She'd only been twenty-four back then, after all, and even when she did get pregnant at age twenty-seven (to Phineas' twenty-three) she had wondered whether they were even remotely ready to be parents. Fortunately, it all seemed to have worked out well in the end.

"Told you I was the crazy one" Three said, although by now there wasn't all that much sullenness in her voice anymore. Maybe she was right, and Three was beginning to treat her own craziness as a matter of pride. "Conceiving a child with my brother when he was nineteen? You can't call that normal, even by our standards."

"I think 'even by our standards' is the key here" Four wryly replied. "Sure, having a relationship with Phineas is unusual, but look at Five and Seven. They're not in a relationship with him, and they don't want to be, but they don't talk about anything else. Five is constantly trying to prove that she's better than me because she's not with Phineas, while Seven is obsessed with the idea that Phineas and Ferb are somehow evil and ruined her life. We're all letting ourselves be defined by our relationships with Phineas – well, not Kevin and Two, but I doubt you'd call either of them normal – and within that context, you're not far away from the norm. And loving him is definitely healthier than hating him."

Three let out a long sigh. "I guess so" she replied. "It just feels like I'm different… because of what you yourself said, remember? You don't have the withdrawals to contend with, and you don't invent stuff." She shook her head. "I still can't believe that no other Candace is an inventor except me. I mean, it's part of who I am, it's part of who our family is. Phineas has it, I have it, Xavier and Amanda have it. I can't believe that you don't. But I guess that seeing all those other Candaces who also don't, and hearing it confirmed by your Phineas, it would be awfully stubborn of me to keep doubting it."

"I can't blame you for having a hard time accepting it, I guess" Four said. "I mean, in our world, inventing has always been a huge deal for Phineas and Ferb, but it never was for me, and Phineas only passed it on to Xavier – Amanda doesn't have any more skills for it than I do. Heck, even Xavier struggles to build the same kinds of things that Phineas does. It's something that really bothers him."

She sighed. "But I understand that it is for you, and that that was why you had such a hard time understanding that I couldn't do it back in the non-dimension. You kept insisting that it was easy, and that I just had to break through a mental wall to get it, and I really started worrying then because I know that wouldn't work for me, so I wondered whether maybe I was just stupid."

Three blushed. "Yeah, I suppose I was pushing you a little too hard back there" she said. "Sorry about that. It was just so incomprehensible to me. Like I said before, my break-up with Jeremy stemmed from my inventing. Busting stemmed from my inventing. My relationship with Phineas kind of stemmed from the fact that we were kindred spirits and no one else would understand me – that wasn't all there was, of course, and we're hardly the same person, but given that you were me, and that you were together with our brother – a similarity that I never expected to find, I couldn't imagine all that being the same and you just not being able to invent."

"Well, it's true" Four replied. "I tried everything – or maybe I should say Phineas tried everything - to gain the same skills that you have, but it never worked out. I guess it's for the best, because although inventing is fun doing it full-time really isn't my thing."

She smiled as a memory suddenly occurred to her. "I guess that was one way in which I am kind of like you, if you don't mind me saying – because on that night on which Phineas and I got back together, Phineas finally got me to decide to quit busting for good… but the way he did it was in part by telling me that I was much better than I thought I was, and that I could invent something and get respect for it the way they did. It didn't quite work out in that way, but I suppose even at the time I never really hoped to get Phineas and Ferb's level of skill. That was always a long shot. And even if it might be a little bad for me to say, that night helped make me realize that my brothers weren't perfect saints to emulate and envy anyway. Phineas messed up with Isabella, and Ferb… well, he punched Phineas in the face."

"Wait, wait, what?" Three exclaimed. " Ferb punched Phineas in the face?"

"I know, right?" Four replied. "It was a really weird time, though, and Ferb had been developing feelings for Isabella over those past weeks, and Phineas did kind of stand Isabella up on their quasi-date that night… it's a long story" she added as she saw Three's confusion. "Basically, Isabella discovered what was going on, Ferb apologized for leaving her in the dark for so long, and because seeing Phineas kiss me had gotten her over that kiddy crush of hers, they bonded and Ferb kissed her for the first time. I… I'm probably telling this badly, but they had been bonding for a couple of weeks leading up to that so their relationship didn't come entirely out of the blue. And as you might imagine, Ferb's blossoming feelings for Isabella hadn't helped in keeping his usual clear head while Phineas and I got together."

"Huh" Three mulled. "That's… that's strange. That's not at all like how Ferb's romantic future developed in our world – in fact, he remained single for quite some time after Phineas and I got together."

"That's… odd" Four replied thoughtfully. "Still not much stranger than anything else I've heard, I suppose. So, who did your world's Ferb end up with – and how?" It would probably be good to hear a story about her quiet brother rather than the talkative one for a change. Thinking about Ferb's romantic drama would be a neat distraction from her own.

Three chuckled. "Funny story, actually. He –"

A loud musical beat cut through Three's words. It took Candace Four only a few seconds to recognize it, and when she did, she could barely refrain from cursing under her breath. "Oh for crying out loud" she muttered, getting to her feet. "Somebody's triggered our security system!"

"That's the security alarm?" Three replied, standing up and following her. "That's… that's not what I was expecting."

Four smirked. "Who do you think designed it? Phineas always says that there's no reason a security alarm can't also be fun. I suppose he's right, but…" She shook her head. "Oh well. It doesn't matter. What matters right now is figuring out who caused this and – oh no."

They came to a halt at the same time and muttered the same word. "Two."

"You know, one of these days we're going to have to figure out a way to get rid of her for a while" Three muttered, as they resumed running towards the location of the alarm. "Her obsession with that tyrant she keeps rambling about is going to burn your building down."

"Yeah, you're right" Four replied. "But if we actually try to do something to stop her, she'll probably fight back with that stick of hers. You know how she is. We're going to have to catch her off-guard, which means getting the others to cooperate and you just know Five and Seven will never do that." She slowed down for a moment to catch her breath – it really was a bad idea to talk while she was running. Or run while she was talking, possibly.

Fortunately Three also caught on and didn't reply, which was good for another reason as they'd arrived at the back of the building where Candace Two was ripping wires out of a control panel and keeping the employees around her at a distance with a stick. Within a few seconds, Four's nerves hit the breaking point. This might have been acceptable back in the other dimension, but it wasn't here. "Okay, what do you think you're doing?" she said, stepping up and using her hand's print to switch off the security alarm, which had just gotten to the part about locating Frankenstein's brain. (It was a fun song, but she really wasn't in the mood to hear it right now.) "How can you possibly think this is helping!"

Two glared at her from behind her sunglasses. "I know you're either naïve or you're being deliberately obtuse, but I'm trying to protect you!" she snapped. "There are bugs hidden in casings like this all over the building. Do you have any idea how vulnerable you are here?"

"Considering that you triggered Four's brothers' security alarm, we're not that vulnerable" Three replied. "And that's not a casing hiding a bug, it's a fire alarm system. Even I can see that, and I've never been to this building before. So if anyone is obtuse, that's you."

"I'm not going to get lectures from you on safety systems considering that you barely know what the word 'safety' means" Two said. "I don't know what you're talking about, but even if your little boxes aren't bugs, I fail to see how they're going to be much help when the Normbots swoop in. Disabling the bugs is far more useful for ensuring that he won't catch us off-guard."

"Will you stop whining about this Doofysmartz guy?" Three exclaimed. "You claimed in the other dimension that you were qualified to lead us but the only thing I've seen you fit to lead is a madhouse! You keep obsessing about threats from a guy we've never even seen and of whom you are the only one to think he's involved!"

"I think it's Doofenschmerz" Four added thoughtfully. "Helmut Doofenschmerz?"

Two snorted. "You are so lucky that I'm bothering to defend you at all" she snapped at Three. "If I didn't do anything, you two would be toast when Doofenshmirtz shows up. But just keep mocking me. It's nothing I'm not used to, anyway. You'll see I'm right in the end."

Four could see Three was agitated enough to reply to that, so she quickly cut her off. "Maybe you're right" she said. "Maybe something your Doofenpapa guy made is indeed threatening this building." She saw Three's bristle and winked to keep her quiet. "But if that's true, shouldn't you want to come downstairs with us? I mean, the majority of us-es are in the basement right now, and so are Phineas and Ferb, and Three's going to be there soon. You can't protect us if you're up here, after all."

Two stared at her for a while, but eventually relented. "I suppose that would be for the best" she admitted, clearly with great reluctance. "All right, I'll come with you. But no tricks or games. I'm watching you."

As her counterparts reluctantly nodded and started the trek back to the basement, Four once again wondered how she'd ended up in this situation. At least there was a silver lining now in that Two wasn't threatening the rest of the building and its employees any longer. That was a good thing, right? Still, she had no idea how long they would be able to keep the bespectacled woman contained. If Candace Two really wanted to go somewhere, Four doubted that even all other Candaces working together would be enough to stop her. Maybe Six and her still non-functional blaster would be, but Six was probably still at Baljeet's.

There was some good news. She'd managed to relay most of her concerns to Three, and Three had really opened up to her as well. They were bonding – in fact, if this situation hadn't been so odd and Three hadn't technically been her Four would have been proud to call her a friend by now. And she had faith that with Three's help, Phineas and Ferb would be able to fix their situation and send everyone home before their tensions exploded into a confrontation.

But she'd seen the way Two stalked around this building, obsessed with Doofenshmartz, the anger that Five spat out at her and the resentment that Seven harbored deep inside. She'd seen how quick Six was to run off and how upset Kevin could get over minor details. They were all different, they were all determined that their own ideas were the best, and they were all Candace Flynn.

And with that in mind, the thought that everything would turn out fine was increasingly beginning to sound like yet another one of those false hopes.

* * *

The room was spinning.

Around and around and around, like some kind of annoying merry-go-round. Candace wanted off the wild ride. Black and purple spots floated across her field of view, and the chatter in the background sounded as if it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. She clutched onto the coagulant-soaked rag wrapped around her arm as if her life depended on it - which it just about did.

Her feet felt heavy as she stumbled across the room, yet her head felt as if it was weightless. Her heart pounded in her chest. She tried to blink to clear her eyes, but they refused to focus.

She told herself that the chair wasn't moving away from her. It wasn't.

She really should have eaten something this morning.

At last, she collapsed into the chair, and leaned back heavily, her vision swimming with spots and darts of pain shooting up her arm. She grit her teeth and ordered herself to snap out of it. She wasn't going to faint, not here, not now. Not when no one was likely to care anyway. If she fainted, the rag wrapped around her gash would fall away, and she might start bleeding again, unconscious, and unable to help herself.

And it wasn't like anyone was likely to help her.

She snorted weakly to herself, willing herself to be okay. This too would pass. It would. If she'd gotten a blood transfusion it would have ended immediately, but that wasn't going to happen, was it? No one here cared whether she suffered or not. Well, fine then. Screw them! It wasn't necessary anyway. It would pass. She wasn't going to die here, if only to spite them.

Pah. Maybe that's just what they wanted anyway. Candace grit her teeth again. If they wanted to be rid of her, there were less painful ways to do it, that was for sure. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she were to question her own existence.

She'd always been too frightened to try.

The spots were mostly gone now, and the room had stopped spinning. She drew in a deep breath, trying to still her racing heart. The calmer she could be, the slower her heart would beat, and less blood would be pumped towards - and out of - her sliced hand.

Thick, sticky, unsettlingly warm wetness oozed out from under the makeshift rag-bandage and all over her clothes. Candace couldn't bring herself to care.

Just be calm , she told herself. Slow your breathing. Slow your thoughts. Slow your heartbeat .

And whatever she thought about - don't think about…

How could she not think about that ? Her one-handed grip on one arm of the chair tightened in a spurt of irrational anger. To think that - that the person who'd stolen her life, her livelihood, her… everything had been here the whole time?

Here, right in front of her, the whole time? And, to make matters worse, it was Three ?

No - no it couldn't be. There was simply no way. This… was unacceptable. It couldn't be happening! What did she ever do to deserve this? Nothing - nothing at all. What had she done to deserve any of this?

Nothing.

And yet, they did it anyway. No matter how much she begged and pleaded and blustered and bluffed to get them to stop, they never did. And Every. Single . Time . she - and her wishes, her hopes, her dreams, her life - got trampled into the dirt without so much as a thought as to how she would feel thanks to that. Well, it hardly felt good .

Could she deny it? If Three remembered her past - and not just her own, but Candaces as well? How on that day thirty-one years ago, a slip and fall onto a rough concrete patio had left her shin horribly scraped open - and how she'd fainted dead away because it wouldn't stop bleeding.

There had been a hospital trip that day, in which it was discovered that Candace Gertrude Flynn had inherited her biological father's tendency towards a slightly lower platelet count than normal. Thrombocytopenia, as it was known.

The hereditary kind, to be fair, that made about no difference in her life at all unless she had some gaping wound open on her. Smaller gashes and cuts always clotted just fine, but the bigger ones? They - well, they did , technically, but the process was so much slower than normal that by that time Candace would've likely fainted anyway.

Still, it was a thing. A thing that changed hardly anything in her life, but a thing nonetheless. She could count on one hand the amount of times it'd actually come up and made a difference.

And, of course, one of those times had to be now .

And One was yet a child still. Two and Six and Kevin came from universes that were vastly different. Four and Five had normal platelet counts. That left only one option available.

How? How could this be? She couldn't be originally the same person as - as Three . Three was nothing more than a revolting perversion of everything sane, just like the rest of them. If she was originally Three, and vice versa, what had happened? That would mean that Three had suffered through the endless torment that she had. Through the seemingly endless summers filled with the pain of being beaten into a pulp many times over, as well as the utter humiliation that came along with trying to expose her brothers to justice at last.

And yet, somehow, despite all that, Three had somehow turned into a perfectly spineless pile of putty, willing to let Phineas bend and twist her into whatever depraved thing he should so desire, for whatever sick pleasure he could squeeze out of her.

That was why, wasn't it?

Nothing was too great an obstacle for Phineas and Ferb . Nothing could stand in their way. If they wanted something, then by God, they were going to get it, no matter how many lives they had to ruin or people they had to hurt to do so. Which, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, had usually been her.

But all the horrors they'd subjected her to in her childhood simply weren't enough, were they?

And one fine, fine day, Phineas'd woken up and decided he wanted to commit incest with his sister. And when he'd realized that there was absolutely no way such a horrid thing would ever happen, he'd gotten rid of her.

Erased her existence entirely, replacing her with someone he could mold into the shape he wanted. And from what she'd seen and heard, he'd succeeded. As always.

Three and Four and Six were all the same. Hollowed-out, gutless cowards who were too terrified to deny their brother's wishes, lest they too meet an untimely end.

Oh, sure, they seemed happy enough, but they weren't. Candace Seven was sure of that. There was a word for this, wasn't there?

Stockholm Syndrome .

Yes, that was it.

She snorted to herself again. As if anyone would ever be foolish enough to believe otherwise. There was, quite literally, no other explanation she was willing to believe. She'd seen and experienced enough horrors at Phineas and Ferb's hands to make that one fact, at least, quite clear. And if Three and Four and Six couldn't see through the lies they were no doubt being pumped full of, well it sucked to be them.

One day Phineas was going to tire of his toy. And just like with everything else, he was going to up and chuck Four to the side of the road without so much as a thought to how she felt about the matter.

She'd seen it happen all too many times. It had happened to her all too many times. She could list them, if she felt so inclined. How about that time they'd abandoned her when she was trapped in a solid-white pocket dimension? Or maybe that time after she'd just been struck by lightning , where, once again, there had not even been a fleeting thought for her wellbeing. Oh! What about the countless times that their stupid, dangerous, overwrought deathtraps of contraptions had sucked her up and squashed her, blasted her in the face with water jets meant for scrubbing vehicles, lit her hair on fire, dragged her across the pavement behind a motor powered chariot, plucked out her consciousness and shoved it into the body of a dumb animal or straight-up transformed her physical state into liquid? Oh, how about the countless times she'd been knocked off cliffs, frozen solid, buried alive, abandoned alone on distant, barren planets or just generally made a mockery of?

It was coming for Three and Four and Six too, she just knew it. All her life, she'd been nothing more than a laughingstock, the butt monkey of just about whatever her brothers had felt like doing to her each and every day.

And you know, she'd actually once been so naive to think that when she finally grew up and got out of the house, it'd be over. But no, it hadn't been. It never would have been. That was her sole purpose in life, apparently - to be constantly tormented. And she could never escape, no, not even after her very existence had been taken from her. Because, you know, some people might actually think that would be enough.

But it never was. It never was.

And all she could really think, as she sat there in the chair with the warm red liquid still oozing out from beneath the rag and dripping onto the floor, was that whenever it happened to her brainwashed, idiotic other selves - they would deserve it. Every last ounce of it.

Even Three.

So what if Three had once been her? So freaking what ? All that really did was prove even more strongly what she'd known all along - that her brothers were, and always had been, out to get her. Well, fine then. Three could have her twisted brother and his debauched, degenerate desires. Better Three than herself, at any rate.

"Are - are you okay?"

A hesitant voice cut through the stewing anger and spite in Candace Seven's thoughts.

"What?" she snarled, lifting her head, internally just daring the interruption to be Three. Oooh, somebody was going to regret it if it was.

But it wasn't. Instead, it was probably the only other person here who could look her in the eyes with even an iota of empathy, even if she was still a bit too trusting for her own good. That was okay - she'd learn in time. It was inevitable.

"Whaddaya want?"

Candace Five blinked and swallowed, looking as if she didn't quite know what to say. "Are - are you, you know, alright?"

"What do you think?" Seven shot back. "I just found out that my oh-so-wonderful brothers completely replaced my existence with some two-bit duplicate so that they could commit incest with her." She scowled again. "I'm just dandy, thanks for asking."

"I… I am sorry." Five looked conflicted again. "I - I mean, you've told me all the terrible stuff your brothers did to you and I, well, I believed you, but it still seemed… I don't know, extreme?" She shook her head. "But if you really are Thr-"

"Were," Seven scoffed bitterly. "And don't you forget it. I'm no closer to being that inbreeding freak than you are. What she did with her life after I was torn out of it is her choice, and she's gonna reap the consequences." She snorted. "I don't know what they did to her after getting rid of me, but you know something? I really don't care."

"R-right." Five nodded, looking nervous for some reason or another. She gestured down to the blood-soaked rag still wrapped around Seven's other arm and hand. "I meant, like, that, though. Is - is it bad? How bad is it?"

Candace Seven glanced down and shrugged. "Eh. I'll survive." She winced slightly - thinking about seemed to make it hurt more. And boy, did it hurt . But she wasn't about let anyone see that. What did they think she was, stupid? No, she'd just grit her teeth and soldier through it, the same way she'd dealt with this sort of thing all her life. The way she'd been forced to deal with falling off cliffs and being struck by lightning.

Because, really, no one cared.

"Okay, then." Five grimaced slightly, eyeing the bloodstains with a somewhat disturbed look in her eyes. "So… that's - that's really a thing, then? The blood thing, I mean."

"I would think that that's rather obvious by now." Seven lowered her eyebrows. "Yes. It's a thing. A mostly-inconsequential thing, but not entirely, as everyone's favorite brother just demonstrated for us." She scowled darkly. "And yes, it could have been much worse. You saw just how pleasantthose absolute… they can be. What? Someone's practically at risk of bleeding to death in the middle of the floor? Oh, let's all stand around and talk for an hour." She could hardly resist spitting in disgust. "But how can I forget? Look at me, expecting things like empathy and pity and basic human decency from Phineas and Ferb ." She scowled. "And their freakshow of a 'sister'. Guess this is what I get for that."

"I… yeah." Five looked supremely uncomfortable. "You don't really think they'd actually have let you, you know, die , do you?"

Candace merely shrugged again. "Heck if I know. Probably. Maybe not, if they thought they could eke more suffering out of me by keeping me alive."

"I suppose." Five sighed. "Well, I'm glad you're alright, at least. I… would rather not be alone here."

"Can't say that I blame you," Seven snorted. "It's not the sort of place that you can be in long without being driven absolutely insane. At least you have - have Jeremy to go back to."

Even as she said the words, she knew they were a mistake. She could feel herself starting to cringe inside. Why? Because it was true? It undeniably was. Five got go back to her life - her perfect life with Jeremy Johnson and Amanda and Xavier and Fred and family and friends and a home and…. and all that.

What did she have waiting for her?

A small apartment on the fourth floor of a crowded subcomplex in the middle of Brockton in the Quad-State Area. A thankless, low-paying job that she had to work herself to the bone at constantly to make ends meet, nevermind the fact that she'd had a law degree before this.

Her annoying neighbors - the ones upstairs that insisted on holding jumping-jacks contests in the middle of the night and ones three doors to the right that loved to blare loud music all afternoon.

And that was about it. Because aside from that, she really had nothing. Nothing and no one.

That was the way it had been for a little over two years now.

"I'm sorry," Candace Five said, apparently seeing something that worried her.

Candace blinked rapidly, willing the melancholy thoughts away. She didn't have time for melancholy. "Tell me," she began instead. "What do you think when you - when you wake up in the morning and have your husband next to you?"

"I…" Five seemed taken aback by the question. "I… don't know? I don't really notice, I mean. I'm sure I think something , but I could hardly describe it."

Candace nodded glumly, feeling herself hiccup for the first time in several minutes. "I just… I had that. All that. And - and they took it from me. Just like they took everything . Everything, Five. When I was a child, they took the spotlight. I was nothing - nothing but an afterthought, a joke, a disappointment because I wasn't as smart and as brilliant and as them as they were." She paused, feeling her despondency change back into anger as she did so.

That was good. Anger was safe. It boiled inside her veins and made her see red, red with justified fury at the no-good 'brothers' who'd taken everything from her. Depression was… not. Who knew where it could lead?

"When I was a teenager," she continued. "I was confined to the background, despised as a lunatic, ignored like a crazy person. My reputation was shattered into a million pieces and flung all over the ground. I was forever forced to remain in the background. 'Oh, Phineas and Ferb had a great idea!' all the people would cheer. 'Oh, Candace did you say something?'" She clenched her one fist and grit her teeth. "When I grew up, I thought I'd managed to leave it behind. But no - that was never enough. I couldn't do anything, anything at all, without being constantly shown up. 'What's that, Candace? You went to law school? Oh, did you know your brother just so happens to hold thirty degrees in that same subject?'" She banged her fist on the arm of the chair. "Yes, I knew! Of course I did! The instant I tried to forget that compared to my little brothers, I was nothing more than a failure, they would spring in to rub it in my face in the most irritating way possible."

"And so then you tried to change the past?" Five echoed. "With a time machine?"

"Change the past," Seven snorted. "I tried to get them to get their just desserts at last. But nooo , because Phineas and Ferb are perfect and no one can touch them! The universe itself protects them. And look at where that got me now, hm?" She shook her head. "Five, the only thing I have to say, if you get home - just run. Run far, run fast, and hope to high heaven that no one tries to catch you. It's the best chance you have."

"Yeah," Five agreed uncertainly. "I… guess so." She shook her head. "I'm sorry all that happened to you. It - it must really suck."

"More than you know." Seven leaned back in the chair and exhaled loudly. "More than you know."

And it was more than she could know. It was something only Candace Seven herself could know - that feeling that you were all alone in the universe, that you weren't even supposed to be in the universe anymore. And it wasn't just a feeling. She was all alone in the universe.

The family she'd loved and adored, the children she'd birthed and raised - all gone. Just like that. Because Phineas had decided that he wanted to commit incest with his sister and the best way to do that was to erase and replace her.

And so he had, ruthlessly extinguishing her life in the manner he'd ruthlessly extinguished Bad Future Candace's existence.

Candace Seven could still remember the look that had sprang up in Bad Future Candace's eyes the moment Phineas had uttered those words.

' Well, if the bad future doesn't exist, shouldn't Candace from the bad future cease to exist too? '

And it was that image of that look that had stuck with her in times like these - that look that had, no matter how terrible her circumstances got, prevented her from simply having someone question her to make it all end.

She didn't know what that look would feel like on the inside, and she had had no intention of finding out. Still, sometimes she wondered how bad it could it could possibly be.

"Candace Seven?"

That was a voice not belonging to Candace Five, that was for sure. And not belonging to any Candace in general. Even before she opened her eyes, she'd recognized it.

"Go away," she growled, opening one eye to take a peek.

Phineas frowned slightly, looking over his shoulder at the group of miscellaneous Candaces and Ferb milling on the other side of the room, then turning back to glance at Candace Five, who was still standing awkwardly off to the side. She looked at the ground almost immediately. "I… just wanted to see how you're feeling."

Oh, for sure . She could believe that. Totally! It wasn't at all like there was a list of reasons a mile long each of which provided a perfectly good justification for skepticism. Did she have to list some of them again? Because she could. Oh, you bet she could. She could sit here until next week doing exactly that, if she had felt so inclined.

"Yeah, right," Candace scoffed. "What, coming over to make sure I've been hurt enough? Are you disappointed that I didn't break down in tears? Would that have made you happy?" She snorted. "If so, you're out of luck."

She hadn't shed a single tear over the events of the past two-and-bit years. Not a single one - and she had no intention or desire to start now.

"No, I just wanted to see if you were gonna be okay," Phineas lied, frowning. He hesitated momentarily. "You know, C- my sister and you look about the same size. I'm sure she wouldn't mind you borrowing some of her clothes if you wanted to get out of those bloody ones."

Candace snorted and rolled her eyes. "You'd love that, wouldn't you? What, you want me to change in front of you while I'm at it? You think I'm dumb?" She shrugged slightly. "What am I saying? Of course you do."

"I…" Phineas glanced back at Five, who still refused to meet his eyes. "Would you at least like me to get you an actual band-"

"Let me make something very clear for you," Seven interrupted furiously, her words coming out thick with spite. "I don't want any of your so-called 'pity'. You're as transparent as pane of glass, and I'll have just about none of it." She pointed back across the basement floor. "If you really want to make yourself useful, you'll get your sorry self over there and get me home. And while you're at it, why don't you stay away from me . Or is that too much of a favor to ask?"

His eyes fell slightly, as if in defeat. "I… guess so." He tried for a third time to make eye contact with Five, then turned and walked slowly away, back to the group across the room.

"Asinine," Seven muttered under her breath. She looked over at Five. "You see what I mean? Just… ugh."

Five nodded, but said nothing.

Candace Seven winced slightly, and moved the cloth wrapped over her gash up a little. It'd just about stopped bleeding, for now. An angry-looking scab had begun forming, little by little, enhanced by whatever coagulant had been in Three's bottle of the stuff.

"Doesn't this happen all the time?" Five asked. "I mean, if your blood can't clot."

Candace rolled her eyes slightly, but was still glad that the conversation had moved on. Five wanted to talk about her blood? Fine, whatever. "My blood can clot. It does. If I scraped my shin or got poked with a needle, I'd be fine. Those are just normal cuts. But did you even see where they cut me this time? Right there." She gestured roughly at the same spot on Five's palm. "That's a bad place to get cut - and it'd bleed badly on anyone. But for me, it'd also bleed badly enough to prevent clotting. Hence, issue."

"Oh." Five rubbed the inside of her own palm, shuddering slightly. "I see. That's… well, it could be worse, right? It doesn't, like, interfere with your life or anything?"

"Hardly," Seven snorted. "And next to Phineas and Ferb? It might as well not even be there." She rolled her eyes. "But I don't really feel like talking about those half witted imbeciles anymore. Heck, I could go without seeing them anymore, too." She snorted and decided to change the subject. "What did you even do upstairs that was so interesting you stayed up there alone anyway?"

Five blushed slightly, but still smiled - in an almost ominous way. "Oh, nothing."

"Uh huh." Seven shifted in her seat. "I should have just stayed at that house, I swear. If I'd known everyone and their mother was going to follow us here, I would have, too. At least there I could be alone ."

Not that being alone was any better, really. But Candace'd been alone for a long time now. It may have been an intolerable burden, but it was one that she was long used to. And it would definitely be preferable to dealing these people all day.

Five shook her head resolutely. "Ugh, no. No offense, but I am never going back to that house, even if we never get home. I'll grow old and die right here in this basement before I go back there again." She shuddered. "I've seen some stuff, man."

Seven raised one eyebrow in a half-interested manner. "What happened with you, anyway, that you got here before now?"

Sighing slightly, Five finally sat down in the chair next to her. "It's… kind of a long story."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay, then. Fair enough." Five rolled her eyes slightly. "What I remember, more or less, is that one day I got this really bad headache. Like, reallybad. So, I took some aspirin. And went to bed. Only, instead of waking up at home, I woke up in the middle of the night here - in - in Four's body. And it was vice versa apparently." She shuddered again. "Waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly finding my little brother in bed with me… ugh."

"Sounds like it could have been worse," Seven said. "Least Four was sleeping too, and not in the middle of doing…. stuff with her brother."

Five's face scrunched up. "Oh, gosh, no, that's disgusting. Blegh! Why would you even say that?" She rubbed her arms. "Not that it was much better anyway. Four's body still did it, and that's where my mind was." She stuck out her tongue in disgust. "After that, anyway, I just sort of… hung out. Got told off by just about everyone, and grossed out more times than I care to recall. Then I finally got home, but of course, not before Four herself decided to lecture me about how my life would be just so much better if I copied her."

"Of course she'd say that," Candace interrupted, rolling her eyes. "And I'm so very sure that she did so of her own free will, too."

For a moment, Five looked uncomfortable. She fidgeted in her seat and crossed and uncrossed her legs a couple times. But eventually she looked back up. "I guess so."

"Well, that wasn't very long," Seven said again. "But whatever. Still sounds sucky."

Five nodded almost too enthusiastically. " Yes . Very." She paused for a moment. "And then when I got home, P-"

"What?"

"Oh, nothing, actually." Five shrugged, a strange expression on her face. "Nothing at all."

"Hmph. Fair enough." Seven turned slightly in her seat so that she could lean back on the wall more easily. Her stomach rumbled noisily as she did so. She was starting to get hungry by now - she really should have eaten something this morning. In retrospect, that wasn't the best idea she'd had, even though she could hardly blame herself for not feeling hungry earlier. She wasn't sure how Five had managed to force herself to eat at all.

"At least you're not bleeding anymore?" Five spoke up again, after a moment of awkward silence.

"At least," Candace snorted.

It was sad, wasn't it? That the best thing she'd had happen to her today, the one thing that she could be reasonably thankful for, was that she wasn't currently bleeding to death . That was just her life, though. Nothing ever came easy to her - heck, nothing came at all. She'd always had to constantly run after everything.

And it would always be taken from her, anyway. Why did she even try? Why did she try to have a normal life anymore? It was all she wanted, really. Just to be left alone by everyone, to her lonely life in Brockton, forever ignored by the brothers who'd single handedly ruined her life.

So why did she keep up the fruitless chase of that life? Why didn't she just give up? Turn herself in, as it were. Finally letting her 'brothers' have their way with her broken self? They surely couldn't do any worse to her now than she'd already suffered.

And that wasn't even the only option. She once again mentally pictured the time she'd seen Bad Future Candace get scrubbed out of reality. Could it really hurt that bad? Would it? Why did she simply sit here and let herself continuously suffer?

"Fifteen," she said.

Candace Five seemed startled. "What?"

Seven gestured across the room where little Candace One had been made to sit on the floor. "She's fifteen."

"And…?"

For a moment more Candace stared across the room at the clearly discontent teenager slumped against the base of the wall. "Amanda. She turned fifteen this year - on January seventeenth."

"Oh?" Five raised one eyebrow. "But I thought-"

"She was a great kid," Candace interrupted. "A lot like me, I suppose." She laughed bitterly. "I had a picture of her in my wallet when I was erased. You wanna see it?"

Five blinked. "Sure?"

Candace squirmed in place slightly as she dug down into her pocket and retrieved her wallet. The small leather object flickered slightly in her hand, flashing momentarily in and out of existence. She carelessly handed it over to her counterpart.

Five gingerly took it, seeming a little loath to touch an anomalous object. But she opened it up, and looked inside anyway. Seven didn't even have to bother looking - she knew what Five was seeing. A little, wallet-sized picture of her daughter, taken on the day of her fourteenth birthday. The picture was a little crooked, and slightly blurred. The flames of the candles on the cake slightly distorted the center, and Fred's thumb had been covering the bottom right corner of the frame when he'd snapped it.

It was, by even the most generous of definitions, a bad picture.

But it was all she had.

The wallet and its contents flickered once or twice in Five's hands as she studied them. At last, she handed it back. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Candace snorted. "That, thanks to Phineas and Ferb , my daughter will never know that she - she missed her fifteenth birthday?" She hiccuped - and not in the temporal anomaly sort of way. "She's going to be sixteen in four months, you know." She smiled a thin smile. "I've been trying to buy some sort of car for that day. It's only appropriate, you know? Only the best gift for the best sixteen-year-old."

"Oh." Five blinked again. "I suppose so."

Candace sighed, shoving her wallet away again. "I try my best."

There was a long pause, and then Five reached over and awkwardly tapped her on the shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Seven asked, jerking away and brushing the hand off. "Quit it."

"Sorry!" Five exclaimed, her face turning slightly red. "I… don't know. Nothing. I'm sorry."

"Hmph," Candace snorted, settling back down. "Nothing for you to be sorry for. You're not the one who did it, after all. I've got no beef with you. Or with that Kevin person. Or little One." She clenched her fist and tapped it on the arm of the chair. "No, my issue is with Phineas and Ferb. And their little playthings - Three and Four and Six. They can all go rot in a hole, for all I care."

Five flinched slightly, but didn't move.

Candace was just about to say something else - maybe along the lines of asking if there was any food in this entire building, or if she was expected to suffer in that way too, when the door to the stairwell opened.

"I'm back, everyone!" A Candace exclaimed, springing into the basement. "Whoa! This place is great ! A regular spectacle."

Behind her walked another, less-enthusiastic Candace, and a moderately-tall black-haired man that Candace was sure she recognized. That was Baljeet, wasn't it? She rolled her eyes.

Oh, boy. This was going to be fun.


	16. If At First You Don't Succeed

Candace Three still wasn't entirely sure what to think about everything.

She was humming under her breath as she worked at the desk that Other Phineas had let her borrow, although her heart wasn't really in it. Neither was her mind - that was far, far away.

I'm calculatin' space-time equations in some lab.

She'd had a long, well, decent-length conversation with Candace Four up in the building's lobby. It had been… interesting, to say the least. And embarrassing at times, for sure. There'd been things that she'd told Four that no one else in the entire multiverse knew, with exception of Phineas himself. She wasn't sure why she told the woman, exactly, but it probably had something to do with the fact that Four was… well, who she was.

Another Candace in a relationship with her Phineas - a relationship forbidden in every sense of the word.

And singing about it in G .

It was odd, the way Four was. In some ways, Four was actually rather like Three herself. She was with Phineas, of course, after Phineas had taken it upon himself to seek her out and express himself to her. And, apparently, Four'd let him, just as Three herself had. Four claimed that she, too, worried incessantly and often irrationally about being found out by an unfriendly party. Three smiled slightly to herself at that. Although it was nice to know that someone knew at least partly how she felt, she still couldn't help but feel as if Four had underestimated exactly how much she worried.

Sure, Four had said that spare bed and bedroom up on the top floor of her house was just in case a stranger wandered in their house and wondered where Phineas slept at night. But, of course, that could only mean that Four was still confident enough to let someone not in on the secret in the house at all.

There was a reason for the virtual doors on Candace Three and Phineas' bedroom - and on the rest of the house, after all. Someone couldn't very well find out that she and her brother slept in the same bedroom - in the same bed - if they couldn't get in the house at all, now could they?

Although, Four's house did have that quantum-ion detection barrier around it. That was a cool thing. Three wondered about the feasibility installing such a device around her own house.

I worked up the plans so it can't be that hard .

And then, of course, were the ways that Four was different from her. Of those, there were surprisingly many, even despite their similarities.

For one, of course, was the fact that Four simply couldn't invent. Just… nope. Not at all. Which, Three supposed, wasn't a huge stretch to believe after all that had happened and been told to her, both by Other Phineas and Four herself.

Candace wondered what Four's childhood had been like without being able to invent. There were probably a lot more pictures of it, that was for sure. Of course, there were benefits to being unable to invent. For one, it checked a large box in the column of 'Normalcy', something which Candace Three had precious few boxes under. And not having to deal with withdrawals, ever, was a good thing too.

Plus, Four hadn't had the chance to let childish wrath and petty jealousy consume her at a young enough age that the spark had been extinguished, leaving her to fruitlessly attempt to get her brothers in trouble. Because if Candace couldn't use her inventions, no one would be able to.

Three blushed at the thought. Okay, so, yes, she'd been all of six years old at the time. But still - that was no excuse. Four would likely be ashamed of her if she knew of the years and years that Candace Three had had only her brothers' worst interests at heart. And she'd probably be amazed, again, that Phineas had still stuck with her unwaveringly throughout.

Sometimes it still amazed Three, too.

To make a space and time ripping thing.

Even with all that, though, it was still relieving to know that, somewhere out there in the multiverse, there was someone who, while likely not understanding her, could at least make an effort to do so. Before now, she'd had her brothers. And her children, really, and that was it.

How sad was that?

But that was the way it was meant to be - or rather, not meant to be. Because her whole life was 'not meant to be', really. She was, and had always been, the wack one - 'not meant to be' was her thing. It wasn't really like she had a choice.

Oh, well, there was Seven, apparently, who was actually her - just her from a different timeline, or something. That was… that was terrifying to think of. For more than just the reasons she'd let on to Four, too.

My song is synchronic, not the least bit ironic .

Candace Three had had more than was her fair share of time travel. And she'd also had more than her fair share of meeting other versions of herself.

Every time, too, the other version would be absolutely off-the-wall insane. She'd traveled to the future twenty-one years ago, too. It was actually to an alternate future - a future where Phineas and Ferb had never existed. And she'd seen how it would have turned out for Candace Gertrude Flynn to grow up with her brothers.

It was a thoroughly terrifying thought, that somewhere, deep inside you, was the potential to plunge headfirst off the deep end and come out the other side as a rambling lunatic who killed people and utterly laid waste to civilization.

Candace Three had averted that future for herself. She knew how it worked. She'd been given the choice to turn into that person, and had chosen not to. But that wasn't really the point - the point was that she could have . And that her alternate future self did .

And now, she was presented with another version of herself. Although Seven wasn't nearly so messed up as that one version of herself had been, it still secretly terrified Candace that she'd had the potential to make that the outcome of her life.

She needed Phineas to be here, honestly. He would know what to say to help.

What you hear is exactly what you see .

Thinking of Phineas made her smile for second. Four had certainly hit at least that nail squarely on the head. Candace Three was… confident that she was insanely lucky that Phineas had fallen in love with her. Who knew what could have happened otherwise?

She'd already met two alternate versions of herself, and neither of them were very pleasant. Committing incest may not have been the most ideal method of solving that but, darnit, if that was the label that she had to live under, then so she would.

Well, she had been, anyway, for the past seventeen years, so there was that. Nothing now could make her leave him, of that she was confident. Her love for Phineas, and his for her, were two of the few things that she had absolute faith in.

Still, that didn't mean that it wouldn't be a nightmare of epic proportions if someone were to find them out. She could only imagine the fallout from such a disaster. If there was one thing in the world that she dreaded, more than heights, more than her old childhood fear of spiders, more than the abject terror she'd felt around Jeremy Johnson's little sister, it was that someday, somehow, she and her brother would be found out.

And then whatever threadbare semblance of normalcy that Candace had tried to hang onto would be utterly lost for sure.

I'm calculating spacetime equations .

Normalcy was a weird thing.

All her life, she'd wanted it. Desired it, dreamed of it, lusted after it even. Why shouldn't she? Her life was an absolute melting pot of everything insane and impossible all mixed up and poured out for her to be forced to drink. And yet… well, she didn't know.

Something that Four had said during her conversation recurred to her just then.

"I'm beginning to wonder whether that's something you're actually proud of."

Candace Three reflected on that for a moment. Was it true? She wasn't exactly sure. Her relationship with Phineas was one of the weirdest things about her life, one of the things that most separated her from the world at large, that most alienated her from all things ordinary. And yet… she was happy in it. Phineas loved her, as both as brother and a lover, and she loved him equally in return. They'd had children together, for goodness' sake, and Candace loved her children more than she could have imagined was possible. She knew that making the decision, so many years ago, to take her brother's hand and let him lead her past the barriers that defined sibling relationships had been the right decision to make.

And singing just what I'm doin'

And then there was inventing, too. That thing which she was doing right now. She would hardly be able to overstate the effect it'd had on her life, her brother's life, her children's lives. To be able to take a pile of supplies and bend the laws of nature in whichever way you saw fit was something that you had to experience to, well, to understand.

Candace Three had been impossibly jealous of her brothers for the longest time. She'd let her jealousy and shortsightedness get the best of her and squelch her gift into nothingness. Thankfully, she'd been able to fix that, although it hadn't been fun or easy to do in the slightest.

It had been worth it, though, in the end.

It was something that she'd long assumed was unique to their family, perhaps passed down from their biological father. And it was something that could be more exhilarating than anything else in the world. When it had turned out that only in her home dimension - that she had been the only Candace to have the same capability as her brothers, well, she'd not known what to think.

And even despite the withdrawals that came inevitably should she try to go for too long without doing something impossible, it was something that she could also honestly say that she enjoyed doing. How could you not enjoy it, really, was the question she had.

Which is calculating spacetime equations.

So what was the end result of all that? Of her conversation with Candace Four, of all that had gone since their arrival in Four's dimension? Or was it 'Dimension Four'?

She didn't quite know, really. It was not an emotion that was unusual for her, that much was for sure. But she did know some things, at least. And certainly not insignificant among the things she knew was that Four was… well, Four was her, technically, in a spatiotemporal sort of way.

Candace Three briefly wondered what would happen should someone strike them both with a Molecular Combiner of some sort. Perhaps it was best that they not find that out, anyway.

All that aside, though, Four was pleasant enough. She would likely be excellent material for a friendship, which was not something that Three found herself thinking often. New friends were… often hard to come by when, among other things, your two children had been conceived between you and your brother .

It was not something that was ever brought up, of course, but Candace'd always felt it an almost impassable barrier either way. These were the sort of things you had to live with as the designated 'weird' one, really. She should be used to it by now, but… that day had yet to come.

Hope for the future, maybe?

And overexplainin' just what you're viewin' .

Four had just seemed so… in control. Well, she still seemed that way. When Candace compared what she saw of Four's actions and heard of her words, it cast such a stark contrast to the way she felt on the inside. And she supposed that she couldn't very well know how Four felt on the inside either, but it should be obvious, right?

Candace Three's own worries about the matter were obvious enough from the outside, no matter how many times she'd made effort to the contrary.

Once again, she found herself wishing that Phineas was there with her. He would know what to say to calm her nerves - he always did. And then he'd likely complain about being bad at handling emotions or things to do with them. He always said that, and yet he still always knew what to say or do.

But it had been like that since her childhood anyway. Whenever she was in trouble, or scared, or needed help with something, or anything at all, he'd always been the one to pull her back to her feet and out of her funk. It was like he exuded safety and warmth that could never be quenched, and Candace longed to feel that right now.

Other Phineas' presence just…. wasn't the same.

All the numbers are screwed in .

Phineas' absence here was making it difficult for her to end her train of thought on a positive note. Positivity had never really been her thing, ever. She'd never really been given an opportunity for it, what with her horrendous luck and oft-stupidity. Still, she tried.

And there were some positive things, she supposed at last.

She'd gotten to meet Six and Four, and learn that she actually wasn't all alone in the universe when it came to some of the most important choices in her life. She'd gotten to travel to another dimension, which… was decently cool, if it was under rather poor circumstances. She was working, slowly but surely, on the equations that would be needed to take them home, and was, ever so steadily, making progress.

And slow and steady wins the race, right?

As my song is concludin'

Candace Three swallowed slightly. She could only hope that Phineas and Amanda and Xavier were still afflicted by temporal memory disassociation. It was better that than being fully aware of the situation at hand actively worrying about it. She'd not want her family to have to deal with that kind of worry.

Still, she knew that was long shot by now. So soon as the complex neurons in their brains reached a low enough activity level, such as in sleep or unconsciousness, their memories and knowledge would begin realigning with the shifted timelines. It was pretty much inevitable. If they somehow were still disassociated even now, by tomorrow morning it would be another story.

At least it was motivation to work faster and harder on getting home? If, for some strange reason, she should need any more.

What you hear is exactly what you see .

"Yeah, I have to say I agree."

The sudden voice right so close to her side snapped her attention back to the present. She glanced over to the left of her and realized that Other Phineas was talking to one of the Candaces - likely Candace Four, by… well, Three could just tell, okay? And it wasn't like it was exactly hard to tell. It obviously wasn't One or Two. Five or Seven wouldn't have gotten nearly so close nor looked so comfortable around him, Six had taken to walking weirdly ever since Four'd lent her clothes this morning. Which left only Kevin and Four, really, and it was just plain obvious as to which of the two it was.

"Agree to what?" she asked, curious.

Other Phineas glanced over at her. "Oh, nothing - well, not nothing exactly. Are you hungry?"

Candace was just about to open her mouth to say 'no', when suddenly a gurgling from behind her gut informed that she indeed was. "I guess so," she said instead. "What time is it, anyway?"

"It's been awhile," Four chimed in. "I've gotta admit that I've been pretty bored down here. The others… can be difficult to hold a conversation with." She glanced over her shoulder. "At least Kevin and Six seem to be getting along. Apparently, although I'm pretty sure they're driving Baljeet crazy."

"Ah." Candace sighed and sat her marker down on the desk, looking down at her work that had collected for the past several hours. "Well, I've been doing my best. There's a lot of interdimensional interference, though, and I've never seen the extradimensional flux waves so agitated in my life."

Other Phineas nodded. "Ferb and I built a prototype rifter, but we had to disable it because the space-time continuum's apparently in a veryweakened state from something. Makes it very hard to tear it without tearing it too much, if you catch my drift." He gestured behind him to a large machine sitting in the middle of the floor. "It's over there if you wanna check it out."

"Cool." Candace Three stretched. "The space-time continuum is not being cooperative today at all, that's for sure."

"Could it have something to do with the fact that we're all here?" Four asked. "You know, the us-es from all these different dimensions?"

Other Phineas looked thoughtful. "Yup. That's likely got something to do with it, at least." He pushed back his chair and stood up.

Candace Three followed his example, collecting her stack of papers covered over with equations and calculations and depositing them in a stack on his desk. "I've worked out a decent amount of possibilities here, based on the most recent flux readings available. It just depends on if we can successfully interact with the gravitron stream or not. It's… certainly not going to be easy when it's so unstable."

"Ferb and I wore out the nucleonic pulse continuum with our prototype anyway," he replied. "We'll have to give it time to settle and heal a bit." He glanced down at the top paper on her stack. "And once that's happened, we can try... balancing the reciprocating E-M harmonic to overload the auxiliary alternating emission." He paused. "To force the system to balance the photonic alternating variance? Might work - but we can't try right now. The continuum needs time to heal before we go poking at it again."

"And it is late," Four repeated, looking over at Other Ferb, who'd actually been standing right there the whole time, even though Candace hadn't noticed him at all because he, well, was a Ferb. "And I'm sure you're all hungry. It'd probably be better for your work if you took care of that."

"No one's really arguing that point," Three pointed out, turning away to face the center of the room. She hadn't even noticed Kevin's and Six's return, nor that they'd apparently brought... who would be Other Baljeet? with them. Where had they found him, of all people?

Other Baljeet must have noticed her staring at him, because he got up from his seat and walked over to Other Phineas, nodding and waving at her as crossed the room. "Phineas," he said. "I do believe that I should be going soon." He swept his gaze around the room. "I cannot say that meeting your… sisters? was not a unique experience. But, alas, I am likely needed at home."

"That's fine." Other Phineas smiled. "Thanks for your help with the ripper, at least."

Three frowned. "You needed help on the ripper? You could've asked me - I wouldn't have minded."

Other Phineas smiled a bit. "Nah, it's fine. Didn't want to bother you, and Baljeet is perfectly capable of what was needed."

"Alright." Candace Three shrugged and stuck out her hand. "Nice to meet you, I guess, Baljeet."

"Likewise," he responded. "I understand from the one you call 'Six' that you are, um, close to your brother?"

Candace felt herself blush madly. Even though Other Baljeet was hardly being accusatory, and she knew that Four and Other Phineas were literally standing right there , hearing it said aloud in such a matter-of-fact manner was not something she was used to. "Yes," she answered at last.

"It does seem to be a recurring pattern," he remarked, turning back to Other Phineas. "Nevertheless, I am doubtless missed at home. So I must needs take my leave."

Other Phineas nodded. "Okay. I'll see you around."

Other Baljeet turned to leave. "Indeed." He disappeared out the door to the stairwell, which clicked behind him.

"Why didn't he just take the elevator?" Other Phineas wondered aloud.

Four rolled her eyes. "Didn't you know? It's broken. Been like that… ever since I got here, apparently."

"Huh." Other Phineas frowned. "How odd - someone should fix that." He paused for second. "Anyway. You have anything in particular you're hungry for?"

"Not really," Candace replied. "Anything'd be fine for me." That was partly true, of course, although there was also the equally true fact that she didn't want to impose any more than was rather necessary. Whatever they decided to get would probably be good anyway, at least judging by the state of the refrigerator she'd seen this morning. It had looked pretty much normal, if a bit more filled with junk food than was probably healthy. But she was hardly one to complain.

She wondered briefly if Four had ever reached into her fridge and pulled out a socket wrench. How had that gotten in there? No one knew. One of the great mysteries of life, apparently.

"Guess I'll order pizza or something, then," Phineas said meditatively. "That should make everyone happy, I think."

"Wait," Four interjected. "You actually can't do that - Kevin will flip."

"What?" Other Phineas paused with his phone halfway up to his head. "What do you mean?"

Four shook her head. "We had some issues this morning. Apparently, Kevin's from a dimension in which, well, in which animals are sentient, and fully integrated into society on the same level as humans are."

"Say what?" Candace asked. "That's… you know, that probably explains why I saw her eating a salad for breakfast this morning."

Other Phineas frowned and glanced over at Kevin, who was sitting on the floor across the room, fiddling with her phone. "I see. So that means…"

"She won't eat meat - obviously," Four explained. "Or cheese or milk or anything that comes out of an animal. Basically, as far as I heard, if we would find it gross to eat it from a human, then she'd feel the same way about it from an animal."

"Ah." Other Phineas nodded. "That makes sense. We drink cow's milk, but wouldn't drink milk from a human. But since to Kevin, cows are basically human, that same stigma would apply." He paused for a moment. "That is… good to know, for sure. I guess we can just get her… another salad, then?"

Four shrugged. "You'd have to ask her."

"That's probably the best plan, yes." Other Phineas smiled at Four, and Candace Three had look down at the floor so as to avoid the wave of homesickness that threatened to overwhelm her.

He stepped away from them and farther into the middle of the floor, and raised his voice. "Hey, everybody?!"

Stark silence descended over the room in an instant.

"You having an issue?" Two spoke up from her self-appointed spot 'guarding' the stairwell door. "Need a distraction removed?" She shot a pointed glance in Candace Three and Four's direction. "I can do that for you."

Three rolled her eyes. Two really was becoming insufferable, very quickly. They had to do something to make it stop. Because it had to stop. It seemed that the stick-wielding woman just constantly went out of her way to insult and dismiss her. Surely the others had to see this and feel the same?

But Other Phineas just smiled and shook his head. (Then again, he was a Phineas, so she could hardly expect him to get irritated so soon.) "No, that's not necessary. I'm gonna order something for us all to eat. Anybody want anything specific?"

"I want grilled cheese," little One said. Oh - Candace Three's mouth started to water a bit. Grilled cheese did sound pretty good. Out the corner of her eye, she noticed Kevin's face twist up, as if in disgust.

...so Four was right after all, apparently. Not that Three'd ever had a reason to doubt her, but it was interesting nonetheless. Apparently Kevin was vegan - but because in her universe, animals were more or less humans of a different species. The more you knew. Still, grilled cheese was Three's favorite food, and she did intend to have some if she could.

"Noted." Other Phineas nodded. "Anyone else?"

"Shouldn't you be working?" Two said scornfully. "I think that's more important than 'food' right now."

"Shouldn't you be quiet?" Four retorted. "You may be the boss in your dimension, but you're not the boss here - so you need to quit acting like it."

Two frowned deeply and looked about to fire off a response, but Other Phineas spoke up before she could get a chance. "It's okay. Look, Candace Two, I know you want to get home to Hector, but for right now we can't do anything else anyway."

"Oh?" Two didn't seem convinced. "And why is that?"

"The space-time continuum is very stressed right now," Other Phineas explained. "The fabric of interdimensional space-time is all stretched out and we've been poking at it all day. We have to let it heal up a bit before we start taking more potshots at it, or we risk pulling it all the way apart - which is not what we want."

"It sounds like that's exactly what we want," Five spoke up. "I mean, you are trying to get us all home, right?"

Other Phineas nodded. "Yes, we are. But there's a difference. See, what we're trying to do is comparable to being stuck in a room and hunting for the door. And when we find that door, we can pass in and out at at our leisure." He paused. "But if you can't find the door, you can't just go and knock down the whole wall. That'd be very bad, because that's a load-bearing wall, and has a good chance of bringing down the roof on your head. You see where I'm going with this?"

Five didn't answer that, instead turning back to Seven and whispering something or other. Either way, it far and away too quiet for Three to hear.

"In any case," Other Phineas resumed. "While we wait for the continuum to settle for us, we're going to get some food. So, what does everyone want? Grilled cheese sandwiches?" He paused. "And I know you want something else, Kevin. What'd that be?"

Kevin looked momentarily surprised at being called out like that. "Uh," she drawled. "Do you have lettuce?"

Other Phineas frowned. "That's all?"

She nodded. "That'll be good, yeah."

He shrugged. "Okay, sounds good. Anyone else?"

"I want some ahrisa," Six decided. "It's good and I want it. Do you have any in your universe?"

Kevin leaned over to Six and whispered furiously. For a moment, everyone stared as they conversed with each other in hushed tones. At last, however, Kevin straightened up. "Vegetables wrapped in bread," she explained. "Roughly. Get spring rolls. I'll actually have some of those, too. It should be a close enough approximation."

Six nodded. "What she said."

"Got it," Other Phineas agreed. "Okay then. A pile of grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone, along with… lettuce and spring rolls. Sounds good to me." He gestured off to a closet door hanging open on the opposite side of the laboratory. "There's a folding table somewhere in there, and some extra chairs, too. We'll pull them out and set them up, and we can just eat down here. That's certainly more space than at home."

Other Ferb gave a thumbs up and set off to do just that, apparently.

Four tapped Other Phineas on the shoulder. "What about the kids? They've been home alone practically all day now - you think they'll be okay until we get back? When are we planning on getting back anyway?"

Other Phineas looked thoughtful for a moment. "That's a good point. Well, it won't be terribly much longer. I'd assume, of course, that you'd want to return home to sleep rather than sleeping here with everyone?"

"Yes, that'd be correct," Four replied. "Not to mention that the house is…." she sighed slightly. "A bit of a nightmare, if I'm being honest."

"Well, why don't you call home and let them know what's going on," Other Phineas decided. "And I'll order food, and then we'll eat and then worry about how to settle everyone in for the night. I suppose you can head home then, if you want."

Four frowned. "Aren't you coming home too?"

"Of course," he replied. "But there's a few things left I wanna take care of before I do." He smiled at her. "Don't worry, I'll be home eventually."

"Alright." Four sighed. "Sounds like a plan."

Part of the issue, Candace Three reflected, with being in another dimension was that you were, well, in another dimension. It was quite literally a whole new world - a world in which you were a complete stranger. You were entirely dependent on what you stumbled across, and more so on the hospitality of those who belonged here. She really was lucky they'd landed in Four's dimension.

She didn't know what she would have done had they ended up somewhere like Two's or Five's dimensions. Apparently Two's dimension was some sort of hellscape where Henry Doofenplotz lurked, always ready to strike or whatever. That was how Two acted, at least. And Five's dimension was, well, it had Five in it - Five and her relationship with Jeremy Johnson, which… was not something that Candace wanted to be confronted with if she could avoid it.

She had no idea what Six's or Kevin's dimensions were like, except that they were vastly different and strange, to match the personalities and manners of the Candaces from there. And One's dimension, well, that would have just been inconvenient. Little One was fifteen herself, so her Phineas and Ferb would be, what, eleven or twelve? That would have been a most awkward situation for sure.

Candace Three was fairly sure that a younger Phineas and Ferb wouldn't have had quite One's probably quite reasonable response to her relationship with her own Phineas, but she had no desire to be confronted with it by a younger version of her brother anyway. That would… just be awkward. In a whole lot of ways.

Well, if they couldn't have ended up in her own dimension, Four's was probably the second best case scenario at any rate. That was a somewhat comforting thought, especially when she considered how so much worse it could easily have been. Easily .

With a slight sigh, she left her thoughts at that and walked across the room to help Other Ferb set up the table. It wasn't hard, being one of those folding collapsible ones, and they dragged the desk chairs away from the desks and up the table after it was fully expanded in order to complete the task.

"Do we have enough seats for everyone?" Other Phineas asked. "Let's see One, Two, Three, Candace, Five, Six, Seven, Kevin, and me and… oh, we're one short."

"Your brother can have my seat," Two said coolly. "I'm not going to let us all be caught unawares by letting my guard down like that."

"You aren't going to sit at the table?" he echoed.

"Sit at the table?" Two scoffed. "I don't need to eat . I had something this morning. I'll be fine until tomorrow, at least."

"You aren't hungry at all?"

Two shrugged. "So what if I am? It's nothing I've not dealt with before. When Doofenshmirtz was in charge, it wasn't uncommon for our entire family to go for days without food because Doofen-ration truck was late or delayed." She shook her head. "And when the truck finally did come, I'd go even longer because it was only fair. Phineas and Ferb were growing children - they needed that nourishment. Me? I was fifteen. I was fine. And I'll be fine now."

Other Phineas blinked. "Ooookay?"

"It's a small price to pay for our safety - our lives," Two said. "I don't want to hear another word about it." She sat her hand on the stairwell door's knob. "I'm going to stand just outside the door and keep watch."

By now, Three was almost perfectly sure that Two was delusional. But whatever. If she was going to stand out in the stairwell all by herself, then let her. At least that would stop her from being any more of a pain in the rear than she'd already been. So that was a relief, if only a small one.

"I hope you don't think that I'm going to sit over there with you all ," Seven almost spat. "I'm perfectly content to sit right over here, thank you very much." The woman flickered several times, crossing her arms stubbornly.

Candace felt like retorting Fine, it's not like we wanted to sit next to your bloody self anyway , but she just barely held her tongue. Seven was rude and obnoxious and covered with dried blood - if she wanted to sit all alone and be miserable, then she was welcome to it. Not to mention that Three still hadn't quite gotten over the sudden realization that Seven was none other than herself - an alternate version of herself from a shifted timeline, who'd somehow stuck around after the timeline had shifted away from her.

"Alright," Other Phineas said patiently. "Whatever makes you comfortable. We'll definitely have plenty of space at the table because of that, too."

Ah, if only Candace Three could be so longsuffering, even with people who pushed every button she had. It was something that only Phineas knew how to do - and Other Phineas, apparently. Which was to be expected, she thought, given that he was a Phineas.

Before she'd known that Seven was her, she'd wondered if the anomalous woman's rambles were even partly true - about Phineas and Ferb being 'evil', more or less, and ruining her life. Now, however, she knew for a fact that they couldn't be. It was just impossible. Which, of course, left only one available explanation: that Seven was just insane. Which she'd never really doubted in the first place. Still, she wondered just what could have so driven her off the edge in the first place. It seemed all the woman did was complain and rant about Phineas and Ferb, really.

As it turned out, resting within a box in the closet was a set of tableware that would be more than enough for their group. Even Other Ferb shrugged, indicating that he had no idea where it had come from. But whatever - it was there and it was going to be quite useful.

A handful of minutes ticked by as they set the table and prepared for the meal. Just they'd all sat down around the makeshift dining table, the stairwell door clicked open, and a delivery man stumbled inside looking very disheveled, and only barely hanging to the large boxes in his hands.

Candace Three could already smell the food inside, and it really served to wake up her stomach. She really was hungry.

"Do you know that there's - there's a woman outside your basement door?" the delivery man asked uncertainly. "Who insisted on searching me before she'd let me in?"

"I…" Other Phineas paused. "I'm sorry about that. I'll have to speak to her about that." He reached into his pocket and produced his wallet. "Here, have an extra tip for the inconvenience. My apologies."

The delivery man looked down at the money that Other Phineas had given him. "It was a thorough search, man." He shuddered.

"Oh." Other Phineas produced another bill and handed it over. "Keep the change."

The delivery man frowned, but turned and left with a reluctant look coming over his face as the stairwell door latched behind him.

For a long moment, everyone in the room stared at the door in awkward silence. Then Other Phineas cleared his throat and gestured towards the table. "Well, why don't we start eating?"

Little One was the first to move towards the table. She claimed a chair for her own, and eagerly opened up the closest box to her. The sight of the food was enough to jar the rest of the room into similar action.

For a few minutes, it seemed that the barriers between the Candaces might be dissolved in favor of food - but, indeed, for a few minutes only. Five filled two plates and hastily retreated back into the corner with Seven, and they ate together, with Seven pausing every few bites to shoot scathing glares in Phineas' direction.

Candace Three still couldn't for the life of her figure what had made Seven so cold and heartless. She acted like the world was out to get her, and yet, Five still insisted on sticking to her like glue, even though it was occasionally rather obvious that even Five was disturbed by the things that came out of Seven's mouth.

Was Three's and Four's and Six's relationship choices such a huge deal to Five that it would push her into Seven's company like that? It wasn't like they were going to actively try to rub in it Five's face or anything.

Then again, what did she know? Five might well be the most normal one here of all of them. It wasn't like Three was committing incest or anything - oh, wait, that's exactly what she was doing. Well, darn. Maybe Five's reactions weren't all that outlandish anyway. After all, who'd ever want to socialize, even briefly, with someone as messed up as she?

It was the story of her life, honestly.

She was so deep into this thing now that she hardly knew what a 'rational' response would be anymore. Maybe Five was right after all - maybe she had even been right when she had been railing against Three in the non-dimension. Candace swallowed a lump of sandwich that was entirely too large in an effort to drag her mind away from that worrying train of thought.

Coughing and spluttering, she grabbed at her drink and only just barely managed to keep the food from coming back up. Thankfully, no one else at the table seemed to notice.

On the other side of the table, Six didn't seem particularly pleased with the vegetable rolls that Kevin had gotten her, but she didn't complain very much either. She made some passing remark about wartime rations that that Three didn't entirely catch - not that she thought she would've understood it had she caught it anyway.

Three'd not spent a particularly long amount of time around Six, nor had she talked with her more than here and there in passing, but that was still more than plenty to realize that whatever Six's dimension was like, it was a strange, strange place. The things she rambled on and on about were proof enough of that - apparently a place where civilization had expanded to an interstellar scale? A place where Six had somehow been separated from her Phineas at such a young age that they met later in life without even knowing each other - something that, according to Four's story, was partly responsible for how Six had fallen in love with her Phineas in the first place.

And according to Six herself, by the time she and her Phineas had discovered the truth, they'd already been married , or close enough at least, and their biological relationship was simply not important enough to either of them to consider breaking apart over.

Now, Candace Three was well enough aware that she'd no doubt missed hearing a good many details from that story, but it sure seemed to have worked out for Six. Just look at her! She got to be actually, publicly married to the love of her life - she didn't have to constantly worry about what might happen if she and her Phineas were found out because it didn't matter if they were found out.

It seemed strange that even when it came to committing incest, there could be tiers of 'better' ways to pull it off. And it was downright disheartening for Three to realize that she was planted firmly in what definitely felt like the worst possible way.

The meal wasn't one marked by long awkward silences, as might be expected, although a good seventy percent of the talking going on was handled solely by Other Phineas. Candace felt… well, if it had just been her and Four - and Six, maybe, or even Kevin, who'd not yet seemed particularly pleasant or unpleasant - then she'd likely have felt more at ease.

But she could feel Five's and Seven's scornful eyes in her back, and she knew that little One was sitting right next to her, ready to interject with a tone of someone who is fast running out of repulsion to feel. And, really, it was just easier to be quiet, and listen to Other Phineas ramble on, and close her eyes and imagine for a second that she was at home again and that when she opened her eyes she would see her own cozy kitchen and family around the table.

But then One elbowed her side as the teenager reached across the table for something - an incident that happened far too many times for Three's liking - and she was rudely snapped to the stark reality that was very much different from her fanciful dreams.

Even despite all that, however, Other Phineas seemed to possess at least part of the contagious enthusiasm that constantly oozed from her own brother, and as the meal eventually began winding to its end, the mood of the room had somewhat relaxed, against all odds, even.

No one was entirely at ease - perhaps with the sole exception of Other Phineas and Other Ferb - but it was certainly more comfortable an atmosphere than had been there just an hour ago.

The meal was just about over when Four suddenly cleared her throat and spoke up. "I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that it wasn't any of you who ripped our smoke detectors out of the wall at home?"

The question hung in the air for a moment as everyone turned to look at Four - even Other Phineas. She rolled her eyes and continued. "Yeah, I figured as much." She sighed for a second. "It must've been Two. It had to be. I just… ugh."

Three suddenly felt an urge to roll her eyes as well. "I know how you feel."

"I know, right?" Four rejoined. "Like, seriously, she's done nothing but get on my nerves and destroy stuff all day long."

"I hardly think you're in a position to complain about things getting destroyed," Seven spoke up from her and Five's spot against the wall.

Four shot a dark look in that general direction, and Three felt pretty much the same way her counterpart looked - though with perhaps an added bit of awkwardness, given that she'd just found out that Seven was only a different version of her. Then again, all of the Candaces - and Kevin - were technically different versions of Three, but Seven was different. Seven wasn't her spatiotemporal duplicate - she was her quantum duplicate, and the difference between the two was astounding and could not be overstated.

It just made her feel… awkward, a little, to get so incensed against whom she now knew was none other than her other self.

Still, the fact that it was technically herself that was acting so spitefully made her feel almost… obligated to come to Four's defense, as if she should prove that she really wasn't like that - really.

"She's right." Three took a quick breath before continuing. "She's right and you know it. Two has… been nothing but a nuisance and a bother and a downright condescending egomaniac who can't admit that she was wrong even one time…" Her voice trailed away as she realized just how carried away she was getting. Not all of that was sprung from a desire to protect Four from her other self. Two was all of those things, and darnit, it felt good to rant about it now that she had a chance to do so without being immediately threatened with bodily harm.

The only thing that could have made the rant better would have been if Phineas had been there to listen to it, but… she digressed.

Other Phineas frowned slightly, a look of gentle reproach on his face. "Now, Three, I hardly -"

"It's true!" little One suddenly exclaimed. "All she does is order me and everyone else around and act like she's in charge for no good reason at all! And if I try to say anything, she acts like she's going to hit me with that stick of hers." The girl stopped and winced slightly. "Or does hit me with it, because apparently that's totally fair!"

Other Phineas made a motion as if he was going to speak again, but he was promptly cut off by Six chiming in. "While I do believe she has our best interests at heart, she could use a lesson in how to handle those interests." Six paused. "Learning to… adjust to relatively normal life after one of constant combat and war is a difficult thing, however - and I know this from experience. So I do believe we should cut her some slack."

"Exactly," Other Phineas cut in. "I'll be the first to admit that there are… some things we could address, but surely you remember what her dimension was like when we visited it as children?" He shot a glance at Four, who wilted somewhat but still remained partly resolute. "It's entirely likely her behaviour would be justified in her home dimension - we surely can't blame her for trying?"

"For trying," Three muttered. "She makes absolutely no effort to fit in at all . No offense, Kevin, but you're not even a Candace and you still fit in better than she does."

Kevin blinked, looking supremely uncomfortable, as if she was wishing the floor would open up and swallow her. "None taken."

"Yeah," One agreed, nodding vindictively. "We should all just gang up on her and lock her in that closet so she'll stop bothering us."

"One!" Four remarked. "We can't do that - you saw her take down a tiger , I mean, she'd have that wooden door broken down in a second." She looked thoughtful for a second. "We should put her in one of the equipment lockers. They're made of metal."

"Now, guys-" Other Phineas tried to protest.

"A radiation bunker," Three spoke up. "I assume you have one? - and it'd be even better. Walls and door made of lead-lined concrete multiple feet thick. I don't care how strong she is, there's no way she's getting out of one of those ."

"Please, Candace- s? - I-"

"I can't believe you," Seven suddenly exclaimed, springing to her feet. "Or perhaps I can - and that's what makes it all the worse." She glared at them, a smoldering rage behind her eyes. "Phineas," she resumed cynically. "Are you really so self-centered as to direct your loyal servants to gang up on the other versions of your sister ? Is three of them not enough for you? Must you really have them all?"

The room was silent for moment - even Other Phineas was speechless before the outburst.

Seven laughed bitterly. "Of course. I should have known." She looked back at Five for second. "Come on. Let's get out of here - away from these creeps." With that, she stormed out the stairwell door and disappeared beyond it.

Five stood up, hesitated, but took a deep breath and followed, albeit more slowly and without so much as a word or even a look at any of the Candaces sitting around the table.

When the stairwell door closed behind her as well, Other Phineas stood up, pushing his chair back. "Alright, look, guys… I get that you're all upset and tense and probably getting on each other's nerves by now. And I know you want to get home. Don't worry, it will happen in time. But for now, we've got to try to get along with each other." He paused. "I'm well aware that somebody's going to have to... bring up Two's behavior with her, and let her know that she should probably tone it down a little. But let's try not to think about - about locking her in a closet or a locker or a bunker, alright?"

Three frowned. "I… oh, alright." She sighed. "Whatever."

"You're planning on being the one to confront her, right?" Four spoke up. "Because I, ah, would prefer to not do that."

Candace Three nodded her head furiously. That was another thing she wholly agreed with Four on, for sure. And from what she could see of the rest of the Candace's reactions, they all seemed to be more or less in agreement.

Other Phineas shook his head, and smiled at Four. "Don't worry. I'll handle it." He looked around the table, flashing his smile at everyone sitting there - but Three could tell that it was different. Hers had been friendly, and polite, and a little comforting, but nothing more.

She missed the way her Phineas smiled at her - the way Other Phineas smiled at Four.

It would probably be a good thing if she were to stop forcing herself to think about that. After all, she'd only been gone for… what, two days now? It wasn't the absolute end of the world - yet. Still, there was hope, it was just a matter of how small and far away that hope seemed at times.

One frowned slightly, as if unsatisfied with the subject's conclusion. "She did hit me. It did hurt."

Other Phineas nodded. "I'll not forget you. Don't worry, everything's gonna be okay. I'm sure that Two is just frightened on the inside or something."

"She sure doesn't act like it," Candace Three muttered under her breath. "She acts like she's the boss and everyone should go out of their way to instantly obey her and she loves to belittle me because, why not? I guess."

"Speaking of going out of your way," Four suddenly spoke up. "How long has the elevator been broken today? It definitely wasn't the day before yesterday, and now it is."

Three raised one eyebrow. "The elevator is broken? When did that happen?" No wonder everyone had been using the stairs constantly - she hadn't ever realized it herself. Her choice to use the stairs earlier when fleeing the basement had been based purely on her not wanting to stand around and wait for the elevator. But apparently it was a good choice anyway, because it had broken down.

Fleeing from situations she didn't want to deal with had… always been a bad habit of hers, one that obstinately refused to be broken and had stuck around since her childhood. It'd happened once when she thought Jeremy was breaking up with her, once again when he actually was breaking up with her, and again when she thought she was going to have to break up with her brother. Which, in retrospect, should have been as clear as sign as any that it wasn't something she wanted, but those things were only ever clear in retrospect, after all.

Still, it made her wonder - about her own sanity, of course, as just about everything did these days - but also about Seven. She'd neither seen nor heard of Seven before while in her home dimension - of that she was pretty sure, at least. Yet Seven'd been there, in fact, she'd apparently been there the whole time. Could it be that the glitchy Candace had been fleeing from something she'd rather not face head on - whatever that thing might be?

"It was working this morning," Other Phineas mused aloud, distracting the train of thought. "When I first got here with Two and Three and Five and Seven. I know because Five and Seven used it."

"And you didn't?" Four echoed.

"No." Other Phineas shook his head. "Two insisted that we shouldn't and I didn't want to bother convincing her that our elevator is safe so I just followed her down the stairs."

"Pah." One replied. "I'll bet you that she broke it, somehow."

"Oh, come on now," Other Phineas said. "I hardly think she'd do - or even be able to do - such a thing."

"She fought a tiger!" the teenager exclaimed. "By herself - a living, breathing tiger. I saw the whole thing! And she won !"

Other Phineas frowned as the rest of the Candaces nodded in assent. "Well, I'll admit that's impressive," he relented. "It's very impressive, actually - though given that she was standing toe-to-toe with giant flying robots as a kid your age… I can't say I doubt it."

"I'm not a- wait… I can do that? Now?" One asked incredulously.

Other Phineas shrugged. "Apparently."

"Good luck with trying, though," Three chimed in. "I don't know how exactly Two managed it, but you're welcome to try if you want, I guess."

The girl seemed to get lost in thought for a moment, and the subject was summarily dropped. For a few seconds it was quiet, but just before it had reached the point where one might describe it as an 'awkward' silence, Other Phineas stood up, pushing his chair back from the table. "Well, as far as I know, Ferb's already set out spots for you all to sleep and stuff." He glanced at his brother, who nodded silently. "So that's taken care of. I guess there's not much else to be done tonight, except wait for the continuum heal for tomorrow."

He sat back down, leaning the chair back on two legs. "I suppose we'll have to get you all some pajamas and clean clothes too, but that'll be easy enough. You're all Candace, after all - you should all fit into Candace's stuff."

"And what about me?" One protested. " I can't wear your - your sister's stuff."

"That's true," Four replied. "But I'll bet you can borrow some of Amanda's stuff. It might be a bit small, but it'll be clean."

"You can't be serious?" One exclaimed. She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. "Oooof course you are. Great. How absolutely not disturbing." The teenager crossed her arms and sank even lower down into her chair, looking absolutely desolate.

Her face was almost reflecting Three's own confused emotions. Today had been a… long day, in more ways than one. Now it was just about over, and although they hadn't really gotten much done, it still felt like a lot had happened in the meantime. She'd managed to get closer to Four, which was nice. She'd discovered her quantum ties to Seven, which… wasn't nearly so nice. She'd endured One's annoying teenage rants and antics and wondered many times if she was really that all-over-the-place as a fifteen year old. She'd been scorned and mocked by Seven and Five and Two, and hadn't really interacted with Kevin and Six all that much, honestly - beyond feeling a little miffed that Six seemed to have her life, incestuous relationship included, completely wrapped up in a neat little bow. Oh, what wouldn't Three do to have that? She was hard pressed to name something.

Still, at the end of the day, all Candace Three could really do was sigh and admit that she didn't know what to think about everything.


	17. Matchmaking and Brainwashing

If there was anything navigating through six other versions of herself, Kevin, Other Universe Phineas and Other Universe Ferb was at all comparable too, it was probably trying to combat bureaucracy as a lowly stormtrooper so that she would finally get the chance to bust some rebels.

And Candace Six had hated that.

Granted, in retrospect that particular example might have been for the best, as after she'd been brought to her senses the thought of rounding up or shooting people who were only trying to save the galaxy from horrible weapons like the Death Star had become abject to her. And if she'd gotten more experience out in the field, she could have ended up being killed too – that, or she could have become such an experienced marksman that she would have shot and murdered her future husband without ever realizing who he could have become to her.

There were a lot of reasons she didn't like thinking back about her time in the Empire, but this 'what if' scenario was probably the most important one.

In any case, it wasn't the Empire that was important right now, as it had long been vanquished, and even the quasi-Imperial remnants at the corners of the galaxy weren't causing the disturbance here. Instead, it was the difficulty of having to interact with all these other selves, who all had different priorities and never seemed to focus on the key issue of getting them home. Six would have used the skills in diplomacy and kindness she'd picked up from Phineas, but she knew that as long as she didn't fully understand what they were talking about, any attempt at mediation would be useless.

Two was obsessed with her planet's Darthenshmirtz and wanted to keep everyone safe from him, but apparently most others held a low view of her paranoia (and Six was inclined to side with them, because something about Two's bossiness just rubbed her the wrong way.) Three had offered to restore her blaster to perfect working order 'just in case it turns out to be necessary' and she'd agreed, but she really hoped that it wouldn't be necessary to threaten anyone again. It was a far too easy recipe for her to lose her temper, and bad things happened when Candace Fletcher lost her temper. The Imperial base on Felucia could testify to that.

It was days like that on which she was glad that neither she nor Phineas was Force sensitive. She knew she wouldn't be able to handle the Force like Ferb could, and she didn't want any chance of that trait being passed on to her kids, either. They were good kids and she had faith in their capacity to stay on the light side of the Force, but when even Ferb occasionally struggled against his darker emotions she was sure that they were better off without it.

Then there were Five and Seven, of course, who were completely disgusted by her relationship with Phineas for whatever reason. Five kept calling it 'incest', which was a load of Sithspit, of course. The fact that Phineas was technically her brother hadn't even occurred to her at first, and even if there might be people who would make a big deal out of that (despite the fact that she'd never thought of her husband as a sibling) it certainly shouldn't bother other versions of Candace Flynn. Even if the sibling relationship that Five and Seven apparently had with their world's Phineas had stopped them from ever becoming romantically involved with him, they should know how amazing Phineas was just from that, and that he was a great potential match even if they had preferred to choose someone else. After all, she could see the same traits her husband had in the Phineas of this universe, and yet Five and Seven still shunned him.

Seeing Phineas here was… nice, even though she knew that of course he wasn't the man she loved. The Phineas Fletcher she was married to wouldn't be driving around in a groundcar, or look at her with confusion as she recounted some of their family vacations around the galaxy.

It was okay, though! It really was awesome to meet Other Universe Phineas – him, and Ferb, and Baljeet too. She'd listened to some of the words they'd exchanged, and even though Baljeet (disappointingly enough) didn't know everything, it had become clear to her that he was at least as intelligent in this universe as he was in her own if not more so, and that he had been able to provide at least some assistance with regards to 'ripping space' (which was apparently something you could do?). Still, it would be up to Phineas and Ferb to do the lion's share of the work.

After trying and failing to have conversations with the people around her ever since Baljeet had left, Candace had finally slunk into a chair near the entrance of the room (it was really nice that Other Universe Phineas had so many fancy chairs in his lab. The design was quite unique too – she should really remember it and tell some of the prolific interior designers on Coruscant about it.) She was trying not to sink into a depression as she sometimes did on these occasions, but it was hard. How much longer was it going to take for her to get home? Would it make it any easier for her to pass the time if she pretended that this was a vacation? She considered asking Other Phineas whether holocameras existed in this world and whether she could borrow one, but even that wouldn't get her in the right mood as her husband and kids just weren't there, and under ordinary circumstances she'd never go on holiday without them.

In the center of the room, some Candaces were still chatting away about doing something against Two. Two herself was of course long gone, having resolved on patrolling the building but making it quite clear that Phineas shouldn't leave that night, which had aggravated Six and the other Candaces with her. It wasn't that she didn't agree that getting them home was extremely important, but she didn't want Two to start pushing Phineas beyond his limits. Asking him to stay in this building all week, without his wife at his side, and forcing him to work deep into the night just wasn't fair.

Nevertheless, it was probably going to be difficult to act against Two for the simple fact that they didn't exactly have an united front to present. Since Three and Four had been the ones to propose it, Five and Seven had stubbornly refused to be any part of it despite disliking Two's bossiness as much as the rest did. Seriously, what was with their determination to oppose their relationships with Phineas so hard?

This whole thing about him being their brother or whatever would make it weird, but that wasn't all, and it would never be enough to explain Seven. Six had heard them talk about busting during dinner, and a chill had run up her spine as she had realized the possible implications. Had Five and Seven been brainwashed like she had, only harder, so that they never listened to their Phineases when he had tried to snap them out of their blind obedience to whatever tyrannical government took the place of the Empire in this world? Or worse, had they almost come to the great realization that Candace had, but had they wavered or been too open about it, and it had lead to a complete crackdown and subsequent repression of those feelings? That would definitely explain their fears of Phineas and their discomfort about being in a relationship with him. The denial they were going through was clearly hurting them, and Six wished there was something she could do about it. Even Five and Seven didn't deserve to live entirely without their Phineases. They might not be the nicest people, but despite that Six was sure he'd tried reaching out to them. If only she could help them…

But in any case, the main thing was that Five and Seven were gone, and Kevin had left the conversation, because apparently she didn't really care all that much (for whatever reason, Kevin was more focused on the nature of the food that had been on her plate, which was really weird as it had been fresh and new but nothing that warranted that much scrutiny) while Six herself was waiting by the sidelines until her counterparts would remember her and ask for her help. Which meant that it was mostly just Three and Four who were talking about this and Phineas and Ferb who were calming them down, while little Candace One was dithering on the sidelines, occasionally offering up a word that ended up getting ignored anyway.

Candace One was… an interesting case. She was a little older than Luke and only a year or two younger than Six herself had been on the Death Star. But despite her young age – and chillingly perhaps because of her young age – she was already clearly determined to head down the path of 'busting', whatever that should mean for Phineas. Which was understandable, of course, as Six herself hadn't fared any better when it came to resisting the lies and deception of Empire when she'd been that crucial age herself. Still, she'd managed to get out of that destructive mindset herself (with Phineas' help), and she was confident that One could do the same, too. It would probably be difficult thing for the girl, like it had been for Six herself, but it was always better to try and cut these things off at the root before they had a chance to implant themselves over the course of years.

It was an unusual thought, that was for sure – Six knew that she wasn't exactly skilled in whatever skills it took to get through the sort of brainwashing programs the Empire used to finance. But if there was even a chance that One's reluctance wasn't her own, and that One was still stuck in the kind of life she'd been in before Phineas had saved her, she would have to try. She couldn't let any conflicts, be they planetary or interplanetary, tear One's family apart.

"Candace?" she called out. Three heads swiveled towards her. "I mean Candace One." The girl blinked, clearly surprised that anyone would be calling out to her. "You can come sit next to me, if you want to."

While Three and Four gave her curious looks but returned to their conversation – only Ferb's eyes lingered on her for any longer than necessary – Candace One hesitated, but then shrugged and made her way over towards her and sat down in the chair next to hers. "Thank you, I guess" she said softly. "I was beginning to feel a bit lonely anyway."

Six smiled kindly at her. "I figured" she replied. "It hasn't been hard for me to keep myself entertained because it's all so new to me, but given that you grew up on this planet I can imagine that all the sights here must get boring. You could walk around this spacescraper, but it's not all that large anyway, and you don't want any of Other Universe Phineas' employees to start asking you questions. And every one of the other us-es is really busy."

One snorted. "Yeah, right." She looked at Six and blinked, apparently needing only a moment to figure out the identity of her conversation partner. "You're… you're the one from outer space, aren't you?" she said. Now that they all finally had holonametags nametags assigned to them, also made out of some strangely sticky durasheet-like substance if you'd believe that, it was getting far easier for all Candaces to tell each other apart at first glance. "I suppose that means all of this is new to you."

It was really weird that One and Three and Four and all the others thought of Six as being from 'outer space', given that she'd spent only a relatively small portion of her life on spaceships and that she'd been living on Coruscant for well over a decade now, but for whatever reason it was a thought she couldn't dislodge from their minds. She supposed it was only natural, given that no one here appeared to ever go into space at all – but then again, Local Baljeet had told her that story about those 'Meapians' and 'Martians', which Other Phineas and Ferb could apparently visit with ease. It was all very confusing, but she was determined to go with the flow, like Phineas would do.

"It is" she confirmed. "This planet is less advanced than the ones I know," definitely considering that it didn't even have a real spaceport, "but there are still a lot of interesting new things to see here. It would be an amazing adventure if not for the fact that my family isn't with me."

The thought of Phineas and the kids made her feel homesick for a moment, but it wasn't enough for her not to notice the way little Candace reacted the moment she mentioned the word 'family' – she flinched, almost unwittingly. Six wondered whether it was an overall hostility to the concept, engrained by the authorities, but she had to admit that that was a little far-fetched, especially given the way One had talked about family that morning - a family that included Phineas, no less. She clearly wasn't opposed to having a family relationship, at its core, but there was also evidently something going on beneath that, too - something to do with 'busting', and Six knew well enough what that thoroughfare led down. One's Phineas might be closer to her now , as might the rest of her family, but it wouldn't be that way for long if no-one intervened on One's behalf. And who better to try than Six, who had herself been all the way to the end of that thoroughfare and successfully come back?

This was important - more important than the question of whether Candace One did or did not want to date her universe's Phineas. But if Six was going to get her to see the holes in the brainwashing programs, though, she wouldn't be able to start right at the top - these things needed to be worked up towards. This was going to require all her memories of the times she'd watched Leia Organa trying to convince opponents of her point of view in the Senate chamber.

"You miss your home too, don't you?" she said, her voice friendly and curious. "It's not easy being out here all alone. May I ask you how your day went?"

Candace One sighed. "I woke up in the morning, expecting to still be caught in that same crazy loop I was in for the past couple of weeks, where I kept waking up to the same day because of some machine that the Dad of some girl I know built… forget it, it'll take too long to explain. But as frustrating as those loops were beginning to get, at least I kept waking up in my own bed in my own room, and in my own life, where Mom runs errands, Dad is a dork, my boyfriend Jeremy is awesome and I try – and always fail – to bust my annoying little brothers, Phineas and Ferb."

Six flinched at the familiar word, targeted directly at the people it shouldn't be directed at.

"But this morning I rolled over to get out of bed only to run into the fact that there were two people in bed with me – my kids . My kids from another dimension, kids the other me had had with Phineas . And the rest of the day was little better – every moment I tried to relax, something weird would show up. Like Kevin attacking me because I was petting Perry… who turned out to be a secret agent , by the way. Or you telling us that lovey-dovey story about Phineas, of all people. Or Seven almost bleeding to death and turning out to be Three, or even everything that just happened during dinner. There are all these other versions of me who have different and ridiculous priorities, and they're all weird, and apparently none of them bothers to listen to me!" She sighed. "I know my own life is crazy enough because of my brothers and the Mysterious Force and because I keep messing stuff up on my own, but it doesn't even begin to compare to this. I – I just want to go home ."

Six paused, at a loss of how to respond to her counterpart's tirade. "Well, we are stranded outside of our own home planet" she said softly. "People are working on getting us home, and in the meantime we have a place to stay, beds to sleep in, and food to eat. Shouldn't we at least be grateful for that?"

Candace One looked at her and rolled her eyes. "That's… that's true, but that doesn't cut it" she complained. "I mean, yes, they're nice to me here and they gave me a place to sleep, but how can I sleep there when everything around me is crazy? I don't suppose you'd understand that, given that you're from another cra- given that all that is normal to you, at least."

"Well, I don't know about that" Six replied. "I've certainly been in entirely foreign situations before which made it impossible to relax even though on the surface, we had a good place to stay. Like that time we went to Arkanis shortly after it had been freed from Imperial control. Phineas, Ferb, Baljeet, Buford and I were supposed to retrieve some data from an old archive. The locals were friendly and set us up in an old Imperial base, right up in the officer's apartments, so our rooms were complete with showers and even bathtubs. It sounded too good to be true, but Ferb didn't detect any sign of deception or traps, so we all settled in for the night. But even though I really wanted to trust Ferb, I didn't quite relax because I kept feeling that something was off about the whole situation. I tried to catch some rest, and Phineas told me to count bantha's, but it took me a while to get settled into a fairly light sleep."

One glanced over to her, and even though she was trying to appear uninterested Six could tell from the way she slightly hunched over that she was intrigued. "So, what happened next?" she asked casually.

Six smiled. "Clones" she replied. "Biologically engineered to obey orders – even orders given at the last moment, and you can't sense hostility in people if they don't know they're going to attack you. Luckily I woke up in time and heard voices coming from down the hall. I nudged Phineas awake and used my blaster to fight back when they tried to shoot me. Ferb had borrowed a lightsaber, so that also helped. They shot down Baljeet and Buford, but fortunately they'd been merely intending to kidnap rather than kill us so their weapons were set for stun. We managed to take down three of them and Ferb went off in pursuit of the others. We followed him but we couldn't keep up with him and since Ferb was obviously strong enough to beat them we let him run off alone and returned to our rooms to check up on Buford and Baljeet. We thought everything was fine again, but it wasn't."

One frowned. "Why not?"

"One clone had managed to hide himself away on the side of the hallway" Six said in a hushed voice. "He was behind one of those huge exotic flowers – probably Felucian import – and waited for us to return. He jumped out from behind the flower and aimed at me when I'd just let my guard down. Phineas caught on just in time – but without a blaster, what could he do? He'd lost his in our apartment during the scuffle. In a snap decision, he simply jumped against the clone and pushed him out of the way with his weight. The clone missed, I caught on and I was able to use my blaster to shoot him down. Which was extremely fortunate, as we later found out that his blaster hadn't been set for stun."

"That's…" Candace One murmured. "Wow. I guess that was pretty exciting." She smiled – it was a faint smile, but it was a real smile. "Was your whole life like that?"

"A lot of it, yeah" Six replied. "But there were quieter moments, and funnier incidents. Like the time Phineas and I went to Kashyyyk. It's a planet which is inhabited by Wookiees – they are big and hairy creatures – who live in giant huts in trees. Phineas was fascinated by them and was insistent on reaching even the most remote parts of the forest which had long been abandoned and had become overgrown. And sure enough, he ended up falling through one of those abandoned houses and ended up in a hole somewhere. He yelled to me that he was fine, but of course he was still trapped in a hole and I had to save him. So I spend half an hour trying to come up with a rope contraption to get him out, only to land on the bottom and find that he's constructed an invention of his own, with nothing but what he had on the bottom of that hole – and that was very little – and he was already about to leave." Her voice was laced with amusement, but also with wonder.

One snorted and let out something that sounded vaguely like a chuckle. "Yeah, that's something I could see Phineas doing."

Six grinned. "I know, right? We're keeping scores about saving each other's lives, and Phineas keeps counting that as a point for me anyway since I obviously meant to save him. And I guess he's right, as I did put in the effort. Now that business on Cato Neimoidia, that really didn't count." She smiled. "So, how about you and your world's Phineas? Do you guys keep score on saving each other?"

"Well, we don't keep scores, exactly" Other Candace replied. "But I guess we've saved each other several times. There was that time when Phineas almost fell off that bridge, or when he was kidnapped by that guy Mitch, and he saved me when I got turned into a fly, and when I got roped up by that rocket-thing we made when he and Ferb weren't willing to do something, he snapped out of it just in time to rescue me. I know there've been plenty of minor issues where we've also ran to each other to ask for help, though. Well, mostly me to him. Like, all the time. Those two just always have to be better than me, at everything I do."

"But he helps you anyway?" Candace Six eagerly asked. "No matter how many times you ask?"

One stopped for a moment to ponder that. "Yes, yes he does" she replied. "I suppose I do get a little pushy and naggy at times, but he does always help me out. I mean, that's kind of what he's there for, isn't he? Not that he lives to help me out or anything, but he can help me, and he does help me, so… wait a minute!" Her eyebrows furrowed and she glared up at her older counterpart. "You're doing the same thing Xavier and Amanda did, aren't you? Trying to convince me that just because I ask for his help a lot, Phineas and I should be a romantic couple? Oh, please! I ask for help from the clerk at the clothes store in the mall a lot, does that mean I should marry him , too?"

Six sighed. "That's an entirely different kettle of Giju and you know it. I doubt you run to store clerks 'all the time' concerning matters of life and death, or that they help you all the time either."

"Oh, come on!" One exclaimed. "The reason I run to my brother is because he's freakishly smart and I need his help to fix things that he's more often than not been the cause of! I'll admit that that's not always the case and I've needed his help for lots of other things, too, but that's notromantic , it's embarrassing ! He's my little brother, and the only reason I run to him sometimes is because he's got the skills to help me out and he'd better put them to a useful purpose once in a while, and because…"

"…because you can count on him?" Candace Six suggested. "Because you know he's the only one who will always be there for you, who you can always rely on no matter what you do?"

Candace One huffed and folded her arms. "That's not anywhere near true, and if you'd know me at all you would know that. But I see you've already made up your mind because of your own perfect relationship with your brother , so what's the use in talking to you?"

Auch. This was exactly the outcome she'd been hoping so desperately to avoid. But the conversation wasn't over yet, and Candace wouldn't be Phineas Flynn's wife if she wasn't ready to try again, just from another direction. "I'm sorry" she said softly. "I know I don't understand everything about your life. But I am a version of you , and I understand my own life and my own h-brother, and from what I've heard he's not too different from your own. And I know how I feel about him, so that just leaves me wondering why you are so resistant to the possibility that you might feel the same way."

Her teenaged self blinked and slowly turned towards her, her eyes open in an incredulous stance. "You… you want to understand why I don't want to commit incest with my brother?" she said.

Six nodded. "Well, yes? I guess so? Look, I've never had a brother. Not when growing up. So I don't know what that feels like, but I do know Phineas, and I can see that you care about him and that he cares about you. I… I just don't want you to miss out on something, Candace. I only want the best for you."

Candace One took a deep breath. It looked like she wanted to be angry, but she couldn't be angry. Six congratulated herself on the soft tone she'd used making that impossible, even though it hadn't been artificially staged – her questions had been genuine. "I… I appreciate it?" One replied, her words sounding quite uncertain. "But… you're not asking me about just anything. You're asking me about entering a relationship, with my littlebrother . I mean… that's ridiculous. Surely you should be able to see that. We're siblings, it's gross, he's just a little kid and often an annoying one at that, he's got a triangle for a head and most importantly, I've already got a boyfriend. Jeremy Johnson. He's amazing, he's kind and sweet and unlike Phineas he's not a little kid but he's someone I'm actually in love with." There was a sudden distant look in One's eyes. "I've been in love with him for a long time and we're finally together now, and in the future we're going to date through college, get married and have kids, Xavier and Am-" Her voice suddenly trailed off and she swallowed nervously, her previous dream-like state gone. "Amanda."

Six smiled. Apparently Candace was catching on to the fact that this plan of hers could well work even if she hooked up with Phineas, because apparently local Phineas and Candace's kids were also named Xavier and Amanda. (Though she had to say that it was a little creepy to be planning your kids' names that long in advance. That made One's relationship with this Jeremy guy sound a little unhealthy already.) "So why do you like this… Jeremy so much?"

One looked at her and rolled her eyes. "Why I think he's better than Phineas , you mean?" She frowned. "Well, like I said, he's always nice to me, and he sticks with me no matter how weird my life gets sometimes… even if in this world he apparently broke up with Four?" She hesitated. "Well, I guess it's no wonder that he did that if she was planning to hook up with her brother. And I suppose you're going to say that Phineas is nice and sticks with me too, and that's true to a certain extent, but at least Jeremy doesn't put me through the torture of building annoying and bustable projects every day! Not that he could do it even if he wanted to, but that's besides the point. And Jeremy is hot, whereas Phineas' head is a triangle!" She pulled out a strange type of comlink which Six had seen Four use before and activated it. "Of course the battery would be running low… but here, don't tell me Phineas can compare to him !"

Candace Six took a look at the first picture of the renowned Jeremy Johnson. Her first thought was that she had seen this guy before back when she served in the Alliance – her second that he looked entirely unremarkable. She supposed that from a certain point of view, Candace One was right. Phineas really couldn't compare to him.

"You won't think that once Phineas really sprouts" she replied. "Look, I know that you think that the things your brothers do are awful. I was there, once. But Phineas got me to see how wrong I was, and from that moment I sided with him and I started falling in love with him."

Candace One shuddered. "How can you do that? Just speak about being in love with someone that you now know is your own little brother? Don't you realize how… how wrong that is?"

"You know, that's what Phineas and I thought at first, too" Six said. "That it was wrong, and that even though we were in love and we hadn't known at the time, breaking up would be the responsible thing to do. We would never be able to do that, we knew that in advance, but we still worried and so this one day we went to the Jedi Temple and spilled the beans to Luke Skywalker. And you know what he said? He told us that as far as he could sense, there was no cosmic reason at all that we shouldn't be together. Us finding each other and falling for each other in the way that we did wouldn't have happened if it wasn't the will of the Force."

"The will of the Force?" Candace One squeaked. "Are you telling me that the Mysterious Force wants Phineas and me to be… to be together? As a romantic couple? Is that why it's always thwarted my attempts to bust him?"

Huh. Six had never thought about it that way, but she supposed that in retrospect the fact that despite the odds, she'd never been able to kill the rebel group Phineas had with him could well point to the fact that the Force had wanted them to be together – and apparently the same thing was the case here (even if the busting was perhaps taking place in a less lethal way, because this universe's Phineas and Candace already cared about each other). "Yes, I suppose so."

"The will of the Force" One murmured, slumping back in her chair. "And the Force always gets its way in the end." She looked desolate, staring at Phineas and Candace Four, who were amiably chatting away at the other side of the room while Three and Kevin were playing some kind of board game. Then a transformation went over her face. "No. No, it's not going to happen. I fight against the Force over Mom getting to see what the boys are doing every day, and I'll fight it over this too." She looked up at her older self. "Look, I can… well, I can't relate, but I suppose I understand and believe that you… that you love him. 'Cause you didn't grow up together, and when you found out it was too late. But I did grow up with him, and I've got a boyfriend!"

One had all but yelled that last sentence, and it prompted Three to stand up and walk over to them. Six remained silent, wondering what this new development was going to bring, while Three was giving One an awkward smile. "I know this must sound… weird, and gross, and creepy to you now" she said. "But trust me, you don't want to obsess over Jeremy Johnson. That's only going to lead you down the wrong path."

"Yeah, she's right" Four chimed in, joining them. "You may be a bit too young to realize it yet, but one day you're going to realize that Phineas means much more to you and can mean much more to you than Jeremy ever could."

"I don't need any advice from the two of you" One spat. "And certainly not about how desirable you think it would be for me to break up with the love of my life and to hook up with my brother instead! For crying out loud, that's incest! Do you really think I would ever want to do that?"

Now Six could feel herself getting quite agitated as well. "For crying out loud, it…" She looked at Phineas Four helplessly standing in the corner, clearly debating with himself whether or not to jump in, and she tried to imagine what her own brother would do in this situation. "It's not about incest" she replied on a much softer tone, trying to appear impartial. "That's a strange concept that's unfamiliar to your life and I'm sure it makes you uncomfortable, but at the heart that's not what this is all about. This is about you, and Phineas, personally. And I know that even if you don't want to admit it right now, you two belong together." She smiled fondly, but Candace One visibly shuddered. "Look, you may say you love this Jeremy guy, but if for whatever reason, your relationship doesn't end up working out, who would you be with? Are there any other guys you're close to, aside from your brother? Any at all?"

"No" Four replied, before One could say a word. "No there aren't."

They were winning the argument, Six could tell, but One was too stubborn to admit it, and by now she kept bending over, almost shutting herself off from the outside world. Candace was just debating with herself whether renewed enthusiasm or another gentle approach would be the best way to go forward when her voice – well, not her own voice obviously, but a voice that sounded like hers – cleared its throat. Kevin walked up to them, and for whatever reason Three and Four felt compelled to make way for her. "I understand that you all feel very strongly about this" she said gently. "But I think you're all intimidating poor Candace One now, aren't you?"

Candace flinched. She turned to One, who was looking up and giving Kevin a grateful look. "You… you know I'm not trying to intimidate you, are you?" she said, biting her lip. "I just want you to be happy… the way I am."

One looked down, pointedly staring away from her. Well, that was all right – they didn't have to have eye-contact to talk, if that made One more uncomfortable. "I guess" she muttered, which Six received with a smile. That was progress, wasn't it? Candace One could acknowledge that Six meant well in her attempts to hook her up with her brother. That wasn't quite the same as admitting that Phineas would make good boyfriend material, but it was probably close enough for the process to get underway in One's mind. And once she took that one step, it was inevitable, really. That was the same way it had gone for her. As a former Stormtrooper, and one to whom romance hadn't even occurred for a long time, it had taken her some time to admit that she had a crush, and on a rebel almost three years her junior no less. But once she had acknowledged that fact to herself, her hesitance had shaped itself into determination to win over the love of her life. The sibling factor aside, there was no reason Younger Candace's future couldn't develop in the same way.

Kevin cleared her throat again, causing Six to look up – though not too far up, as Kevin had gotten down into a squatting position to face One before turning back to Six now. "I can understand that you really care about your world's Phineas" she said. "And that you want to share the… the relationship you're in with all the others. And the fact that you do is a very positive thing. But we can't afford this right now. Candace here has a right not to choose the path you've taken, and you can't push her into it."

"I'm not trying to push her into anything" Six replied softly. "I know she doesn't want to be married to Phineas, the way I am." She turned back to her younger self, who still looked grumpy but was now giving her a curious look. "But, Candace… I'm not asking you to do that, or even to consider that. You don't need to marry Phineas, or sleep with him, or even commit to a relationship with him. All I'm asking you is to give him a chance."

One snorted. "Give him a chance? For what – if he asks me out? Like he'd ever do that. Phineas is just my little brother, and he only cares about building stupid inventions. He doesn't have any romantic feelings for me. If he did, I'd be able to tell." She stared straight ahead, and Six could see a certain tension in her, as if she was suddenly a lot stiffer than she'd been before. Interesting.

"Are you sure?" she replied. "You've mentioned all the things he does just for you, and Three and Four are confident enough about how their Phineases – and by default, your Phineas – feels about them, and thus about you." She smiled. "I mean, I know there are differences from universe to universe – heck, we're in a universe without space travel right now! But Phineas is Phineas, no matter where you go. And that's why I know he loves you."

"Candace…" Kevin said, her voice sounding stern.

"She's right, you know" Four's voice echoed from a couple of yards away. The woman was still watching the conversation with interest, whereas Three had apparently returned to working on scientific equipment.

Six kept her eyes focused on One, who was shuddering. "I…" she stammered. "I don't want…" She shook her head. "Look, I just got here, okay? I didn't even realize that this was a possibility until yesterday morning. So I'm not… I'm fifteen, and I'm not ready to make decisions about my future right now." She looked jittery, but Candace Six almost couldn't restrain her enthusiasm. She felt like she was really getting through to the girl. Maybe she should just let her stew on the thought of dating Phineas for a while? It probably was overwhelming to be introduced to the thought of dating him over the course of one day and then be expected to do it, but if she left Candace alone right now she would undoubtedly come to the natural conclusion that Six was right.

"I'm not trying to force you into a decision" she said, patting Candace One on the back. "I know this must be difficult for you. All I want you to do is consider this decision with an open mind when it comes. Just… just think about it, okay? That's all I ask. That you consider Phineas."

One gave her a look, but remained silent for a long time – probably up to half a minute. "Yeah" she finally replied. "Sure." She looked up at the others, particularly Other Universe Phineas. "Look, I'm going to go now, because it's getting late and it's probably going to be another long day tomorrow, right?"

"Probably, yes" Phineas replied. "Well, good night then. Do you need me to help you find your sleeping quarters? Or just for company? They're on the ninth floor, and it is quite a walk…"

"I'll be fine" One replied. "I've run plenty of miles over the past summer – it's no big deal. Well, goodnight!" She bolted towards the staircase and shut the door behind her at a speed that made Candace Six grin. Ah, youthful energy. She did kind of miss having that, but then again it was easy to be worn out when she was trying to raise four kids – and one occasionally kind of childish husband.

She lead an unusual life, she really did. She supposed she'd always known that, but encountering other versions of herself such as Candace One helped rub it in. From the looks of it Candace One was enjoying at least some form of a childhood alongside her siblings – granted, if she still wanted to bust them that had to mean that some government had still gotten its claws in her, but they were together at least. Six had never had that, and it was only because she had married someone with Phineas' youthful spirit and open-mindedness that she'd been able to live some of the experiences she should have had as a child or teenager within their relationship as young adults. Those days were long over by now, but it just made her look back on it with fond memories. How she loved her husband – and how she hoped that Candace One had finally come to that same insight, too.

"I think that went well" Kevin commented. Six had been so lost in thought that she hadn't even noticed that the other woman was still standing next to her. "At one point you were really pushing her into the life you wanted her to live, and I was worried that you two were going to come to blows. I'm glad that didn't happen." She frowned. "Look, I'm not going to oppose your relationship with Pe- Phineas , okay? You live in a wholly different universe with entirely different laws. And as for Three and Four… well, I still think it's weird, and I'd complain, but there is so much here that's so much weirder and I'm not going to make a fuss about it in the way Five and Seven did. That was just… so uncivilized." She gave Six a sharp look. "But it would better serve you in the future to leave the child out of this. And me, for that matter. I am happily married to Wilma, and I hope you're not going to try to convince me that Petra is the best thing since sliced bread."

Six frowned. "Sure." That was… maybe a little disappointing, as she really wanted the best – ergo, Phineas – for all her counterparts. But Kevin did say she was happy, and from what she'd seen of the woman all day there was no indication she was brainwashed or repressing feelings the way Five and Seven obviously were. She supposed that it might be best if she focused on them and just left Kevin alone. Setting out priorities, as it were.

They remained in the basement for probably at least another hour. (There were old-fashioned chronometers on the wall, but it was hard for Six to determine anything from the squiggles on them – seriously, not being able to read the local language-that-somehow-still-sounded-like-her-own was proving to be a major deterrent to her fitting in here.) Phineas, Ferb and Three got some work done, while Four tried to teach Six some kind of card game. It was a lot like sabacc at first, but it soon turned out to be entirely different. She'd have to remember the rules so she could tell the kids. She knew Tyrria at least would get a kick out of this.

Kevin announced her departure after the hour had passed, which in turn caused Candace Four to realize how late it had gotten and to announce that she was going home. She and Phineas discussed some things regarding the kids before sharing a long goodbye hug and a couple of cheek kisses. Six couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene. They looked so adorable. The lab coat Phineas was wearing helped – it was a relatively tight fit, but he just looked so hot in it. Was it okay for her to ogle an Other-Universe version of her husband? Eh, she was doing it anyway. Phineas was Phineas, after all.

After Four's departure it only took a couple more minutes of Three, Phineas and Ferb working away at the project before Three let out a loud yawn. "Maybe you should go up as well" Phineas said, concerned. "I mean, you've probably been through a lot more stress than Ferb and I have over the past couple of days. We'll try to stick around here until one in the morning and get some work done."

"Don't stay up too late" Three said with a grin, until her face contorted a moment later. "Not that you can't do what you want, of course. It's not my business."

Phineas smiled. "No, that's fine. As Candace always tells me, I really have a tendency to stay out in the lab for too long. But there are beds around, so Ferb and I will be fine." The quiet man gave them a thumbs-up. "You remember where to go, don't you?"

"Of course I do" Three said in a remarkably easy-going manner, although Candace almost thought her body language indicated different emotions? Oh well, that wasn't important. It wasn't like Three was a potential enemy who could jump on her at any moment. She would have been displayingvery different emotions if that were the case. "Good night!"

After issuing the same greeting and hearing Phineas respond to it, Six followed Candace Three to the stairway. This spacescraper might not be particularly high, but the fact that the elevator wasn't functioning made moving around in it more taxing than anything on Coruscant, barring 500 Republica. And the Senate. And the Jedi Temple. And… well, on second thought there were probably still a lot of buildings that were more difficult to travel in than this one. Everything was big on Coruscant, after all.

Three stopped after they'd gone two flights up in order to give Six a chance to catch up. "So how did the rest of your conversation with One go?" she asked. "I guess you weren't able to convince her?"

"Well, obviously she didn't instantly go along with what I was saying" Six replied. "But I really think I made some progress with her. She knows I meant well, and she couldn't deny that her Phineas loves her. And she did finally say she'll give Phineas a chance! And when she does…" She left the sentence unfinished, because the outcome was obvious anyway.

Three frowned. "She said that ?"

"Well, I asked her to consider the decision she'll have to make between Phineas and this Johnson guy with an open mind, and she agreed" Six replied. "Not the same exact words, but it sounds the same to me. She knows it's a possibility now, and if her Phineas is anything like the man I know – and he is, I have no doubt of that by now – it shouldn't take her too long to really see that our way is the best way." She frowned. "Like Four said, what's the alternative? I mean, I never needed an alternative because I had Phineas, but what's up with that Jeremy Johnson? What makes him so special to her?"

Her other self stared at her and shook her head. "I suppose that would be hard to get for anyone who isn't me and didn't grow up in his neighborhood the way I did" she replied. "Even looking back it's hard for me to understand why I loved Jeremy Johnson that much – why I was obsessed with getting him to stick around, so obsessed that I…" She shuddered and shook her head. "Never mind. I don't think it was even so much that I thought Jeremy was amazing for who he was but for what he did for me. He stuck around with me even despite me being… well, the person who I am. Crazy, neurotic, chronically insecure. It sounds kind of stupid looking back at it now, but of course I wasn't seriously considering Phineas as an alternative at the time. If I was, I would have seen that he was better for me, despite being… despite being my brother. Because when you live my life, apparently only dating your brother will give you any semblance of stability." She shook her head. "You're really lucky, aren't you Six? I suppose you would know that already, but you've got it all figured out. No one knows your secret and no one could possibly know, because it's such a different secret from the one Four and I have to keep."

"I…" Six frowned and shook her head. "I'm sorry, you lost me." In fact, a lot of what the other woman had said had sounded very incomprehensible. Why did Three think she was crazy? Well, besides the fact that she lived on this old-fashioned planet (or rather, another version of this old-fashioned planet) which didn't have any spacecraft, decent spacescrapers, or any non-human sentients, and that she'd somehow used stuff inside Six's blaster to get them there. But surely that didn't make her any crazier than One or Four or Five or Two. (Well, it probably made her less crazy than Two. And than living-hologram Seven as well.)

Three sighed. "You're in a relationship with your brother, like I am" she patiently explained, continuing the trek upstairs with Six following close behind. "But you… you cope with it. You don't hide it, because you don't even have to hide it. You don't have to live in this house filled with virtual doors and portals because you're terrified that anyone could find out and judge you for what you did. You never had to worry about losing friends when they found out you were with Phineas, because why should you? They didn't know him as anything but your husband, apparently." She shook her head. "I know I'm being rambly, and it's been pointed out to me that I get a little overdramatic about this at times, but it just feels like even when it comes to incest , other versions of myself can cope in a saner way than I can."

"Well, I won't deny that my life is awesome" Six replied with a smile. "I've got a husband, kids, great friends, and our home is beautiful. Ever since the Empire was defeated, even things on a major scale have been pretty peaceful - and there's some people saying that that was the last major war that's going to go in the galaxy. Of course, even if there was another evil rising, you can bet it'd be our first order to nip it in bud, before it was able to reach anywhere near the heights of the old Empire. It's certainly an entirely different – and much better – place than where I expected to be when I was a kid. But you know what? I used to be an Imperial stormtrooper – I almost shot Phineas just before he saved my life and we really met each other. So when it comes to crazy, I think I might just have you beat. I just hope I have the others beat, too, or that I can help them fix their relationships with Phineas before it ever gets to that point." She sighed. "And the whole fact that we're biologically related… I suppose it doesn't have much of an impact on my life, but it's there, and we did have to put in some work to keep it hidden." She shook her head. "Not that I don't get where you're coming from, because having to hide the fact that you're in a relationship must be tough, but… well, you grew up with him, didn't you? That's fourteen whole years of his life that I missed with my Phineas. It doesn't bother me all that much, but back when he didn't know we were related yet he did tell me that he really wanted to see the sister again that left Tatooine when he was just a baby… and well, I've been a lot of things to him over the past twenty years, but a sister isn't one of them."

"Well, at least your lack of a sibling relationship with him saved you from making the mistake of trying to bust him for years on end" Candace Three replied, making a point that Six supposed was true enough – although she liked to believe that, had they both grown up on Tatooine, she and Phineas would have been friends from the start (and as she now knew, it wouldn't have necessarily hindered the development of the romantic relationship between them which she treasured deeply). "I guess you're right, though. I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on having my brother for the world, even if that had meant that we could be together in an official way. It's just so frustrating. I was terrified about what to tell my best friend and my parents, and we tried to hide it from them as well as we could, but neither Phineas and I have ever been good at keeping secrets." She frowned. "I suppose that talking to your parents about this was still an issue that you would have had to deal with, right?"

That innocent question suddenly brought back a lot of old memories, and Six shuddered. "Yeah, it was definitely difficult" she replied. "Phineas had gone back to his home planet a couple of times after he'd saved me, but I had never gone along and I'd tried to avoid it when we found out about my background. But his parents… my mother… they really insisted on wanting to see Phineas' fiancée, so I finally had no choice but to come along with him. I tried to take precautions, and for some time I thought I'd actually fooled them. And I was partly right – especially since Phineas and Ferb's father didn't even know me aside from some old pictures – but his mother started suspecting the truth soon enough. She confronted us with it just as we were planning to leave, and, well, obviously it started an argument. She was convinced that either we both had no idea – but my reactions had made that implausible – or that Phineas didn't know and I'd seduced him into this. Phineas defended me, we shouted at each other a lot and eventually I stormed off into the desert. Mr. Fletcher eventually came back to get me, telling me that Phineas had managed to convince his mother of the truth, and that even though she had some difficulty accepting it he was entirely happy to accept me as just his daughter-in-law, no matter what world I came from. It took his wife a couple of days, but eventually she came around, and we had a good mother-daughter talk before we left Tatooine."

She shook her head and looked up at Three. "It was the last time we ever saw them. Two months later the Tuskens attacked their village and… and Phineas' parents were among the victims. We never went back to Tatooine again." She glanced over at Three, whose face was now contorted with horror. "So, yeah. There are plenty of things in life I'm thankful for, and in general I'm not complaining, but it's far from being as perfect as you claim it is."

Candace Three shook her head. "That's… that's awful" she murmured. "I'm sorry, I didn't know…"

"Of course you didn't." Six shrugged. "How could you? And it was years ago, and like I said, I didn't really feel that they were my parents. I felt guilty, even, for seeing how broken up Phineas and Ferb were and not really and truly being able to relate. They say that the Jedi used to be super binary about attachment, but being a stormtrooper? That kriff really isolates you.. It was much harder on Phineas and on Ferb. They were caught between despair and anger – it was probably the first time I'd ever seen Phineas truly angry. Luckily, as soon as I had gone to the Temple and told Grand Master Luke about Phineas and Ferb having anger issues involving their parents' death at the hands of Sand People, he immediately stepped in and gave me all the help that I needed to get them through it. I was really terrified for a while there about what would happen if they snapped – obviously about Ferb, because he can use the Force, but Phineas is… well, Phineas. He's so pure, and I knew that this kind of thing can drive even the purest and well-meaning people to do terrible stuff."

Three nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's true. Phineas doesn't get angry or sad often, but when he does… well, it's not a pretty picture. And I'm the worst at consoling him, even if he still always gets better in the end."

"Same here" Six replied. "I suppose that it really is a good thing that he's so strong, mentally speaking at least. He always gets through something no matter what happens, and after that – sometimes even during it – he can turn right around to comfort me. I think that's part of why it matters so much to me that One sees how amazing he is. Because being in a relationship with him isn't just great, but she might also end up needing it one day. More than she can ever imagine right now."

Her other self remained quiet for a while as they continued to walk upwards – and, if the labels on the doors were any indication, getting closer to their destination. "Do you really think that'll work?" she said. "I mean, she's a younger version of us… and likely to be closer to my past than to yours. And I know how stubborn I was at that age. I agree that she needs Phineas, but she might be too stubborn to want to realize that, especially if we put too much pressure on her. To her, Phineas is just her annoying little brother, as dumb as that might sound, and telling her that she should consider him romantically could result in her going in the opposite direction."

"It won't" Six replied confidently. "And you know why? Because yes, she complains about incest and glorifies this Jeremy guy, but you know what she didn't do? Entering into all kinds of metaphors on how ridiculous it is. I mean, if you're facing someone who asks you to have incest with your brother and you really don't want it, you're going to compare it to dating your other brother or your cousins, or even your father, just to point out how absurd it is to even consider this as a concept. But she didn't do that. It didn't even occur to her, because she knows deep down in her heart that Phineas is different. With all those other people, a romantic relationship would be ridiculous indeed. But Phineas is a different case, so it didn't occur to her to equate the two in her mind and use that as an argument to fight against us."

"No offense, but that seems like an argument that's a bit too shallow to base your confidence on" Three replied. "Talking from experience, even from the moment when I realized that the fact that Phineas was asking me whether I wanted to go out with him made it feel different than if any other family member had asked me the same thing, it took me a long time before I realized and accepted my feelings for him. I hope One will get happy with Phineas, of course I do, but she's stubborn, and you can't point to the things that she didn't do or say as evidence. That's not going to get us anywhere with her."

"Well, I suppose that you are a possible older version of her, so you'd know her best" Six admitted, as they reached the ninth floor. "We'll see where she stands on the issue tomorrow."

Candace Three contemplated that for a moment, then nodded. "Fair enough." She looked out through the hallway, her eyes fixated on the voices they could hear coming from the back cubicle. "I think that's Five?" she said. "And little me. Well, at least I know where I'm not going to sleep tonight." She tried a door closer to her, which opened into a still empty room. "This should work. Good night, Six. You'd better find yourself a place to stay soon before Two creeps up on you out of nowhere."

Six smiled, but only slightly – she had to admit that that was a legitimate concern. "Good night" she responded, turning around to look over her shoulder. There was nothing there, and although the idea that another version of herself could possibly sneak up on her was giving her the creeps she wasn't feeling incredibly disturbed overall.

Entering the room closest to the staircase (and the elevator, not that that was at all relevant right now) Six shook her head. She had no idea why Two insisted on being like that. If her version of Darthenshmirtz was such a legitimate threat, shouldn't he have interfered already? They'd been here for over a day now, and still Candace had seen no sign of him – and she supposed that could be because Two had scared him off or fended him off, but something in her doubted that. Maybe he was obfuscating stupidity by making them think that everything was okay only to jump to action when Two would be caught off-guard?

Well, if that was what he was planning, they would probably be safe from Darthenshmirtz for a while. Two wasn't going to be caught off-guard soon – and for that exact reason, the Candaces around her were seriously contemplating an intervention. Six wondered whether that would just give Two the idea that this was what Darthenshmirtz was trying to achieve all along: wait, sow chaos, reap profits. It was an understandable strategy, but given that she still wasn't sure he was even out there Six doubted whether it was actually true, and if she doubted it all of the other non-Two Candaces would doubt it too. She would really need to have a chat with Two soon to help the woman do something about her… her image problem, as Kevin might have put it.

After getting dressed in the pajamas Four had laid out for her (they were still uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as her day clothes had been) Candace Six crawled under the blankets. Although they were warm and comforting, lying down hammered home more than anything that Phineas wasn't here with her.

Would it all work out? Candace Six had no reason to doubt the skills of Four's Phineas and Ferb, and she had by now become reasonably convinced that Candace Three had many of those skills as well, but she was sure that accessing another universe had to be extremely difficult. And even if she'd been entirely sure that her brothers' other selves would be able to pull it off, the fact that they hadn't done so yet and Candace was still stuck here being all alone made her feel insecure.

She just needed to keep having faith, like Phineas would. He'd be at ease with everything because he knew it would be fine in the end, and of course it would be. But those reassurances that he would undoubtedly give her would have sounded a lot more convincing if he was actually here to give them. She sighed, wondering whether she could ask Four or her kids for a plush toy or something like that. Anything to give her the feeling that she wasn't alone in this bed.

(She'd ask Phineas Four to come and snuggle up to her for a few minutes, but she figured that neither he nor Candace Four would deem that acceptable. She wasn't entirely sure about the idea herself either.)

It was just a matter of time before they would go home and it would all be fine again. Six knew she had to keep believing that, and she kind of did. But she also knew that today had been an especially tumultuous day with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, from all the things she'd discovered while hanging out with Kevin (such as the whole issue with Baljeet) to her hope that Candace One might finally be looking at her brother in a different way. It had gone relatively well for her, all things considered. Sure, she hadn't gotten any closer to home, but given some of the stories she'd heard over dinner about the insecurities and conflicts that the other Candaces had been confronted with, her day could have easily gone much worse.

But Candace Six was no fool. And she knew that one day going well was no guarantee that the next day wouldn't turn into a disaster. In fact, it was rather likely.

Because when she was surrounded by six other versions of herself all living and sleeping in one building, the only thing she could be sure of was that there was plenty of turmoil yet to come.


	18. Sweet Dreams

Candace One was freaking out.

Yes, that was a good way to put it. She'd been through a lot over the course of her life. And over even just the course of this past summer. She'd been to multiple other planets, traveled through time, flown around the world, and all the way to a distant star - which had turned out to be a milkshake bare, but the point remained. And for the past month she'd been living September 22, 2038 over and over and over again, trapped in a time loop that continuously had her waking up on the last day of summer.

And over the course of all those things, she'd freaked out. A lot. But this - this was different. Because she was in another dimension , and there were other versions of her here. Not that other versions of herself were even that big of a deal - between time travel, cloning, the Candroid (who knew where that thing had gone), mind transference, and Phineas and Ferb's stupid splitting machine, she'd been there, and done that.

But here, oh no, here there were no less than three out of eight versions of her who - who had somehow gotten involved romantically with their little brother and Candace Six was married to him and they all had had children and - and…

Candace looked down at herself, grimacing at the slightly-too-small pajamas that she'd been practically made to wear. Did no one else in this twisted, crazy world realize how wrong this all was? She'd been given the pajamas belonging to her future daughter - her future daughter that her older self had had with her own brother ?

And to top it all off, no one seemed to care . Well, of course Three and Four and Six wouldn't care. They were the ones committing incest , after all - and the ones who couldn't stop trying to shove it down Candace's throat as well. Did they see nothing wrong with the idea of hooking up with their own brothers? Nothing at all?

Apparently not, given how eager they'd been to push her in that direction. It was all Candace One could do to dig her heels in and resist - which she'd been having to do a lot of recently, and it hadn't really been working out all that great for her either. It - it just wasn't fair!

Why did she have to be the only one under the age of - of twenty, even? She was only fifteen and it just wasn't fair! All the other Candaces were somewhere in their late thirties, apparently, more than twice her age - and all that meant was that she constantly got shoved around and ignored and forced into all manner of horridly uncomfortable situations. Candace Four'd forced her to sleep in the bed with her children , and then turned around and tried to make her look at her own annoying brother as someone that she could potentially romance, as if that was something that was totally normal and not at all disgustingly repulsive.

Three and Six hadn't been much better. Apparently none of them could realize just how wrong this all was. She was just a teenager - this wasn't the sort of thing she was supposed to have to handle. Falling off cliffs? Fine. Stuffed into a vase? Whatever. Struck by lightning? Endurable. Turned into a sentient liquid and poured out all over the ground? She could deal with it.

But not this. Never this. Her life was a crazy, wild, insane, messed up one - but it was crazy, wild, insane, and messed up in roughly the same pattern over and over. Except for now - now the pattern was breaking. It was breaking and she didn't like it one bit.

Candace plopped herself down on the mattress with an exasperated sigh. Four's brothers had found some out-of-the-way hall on the ninth floor of the building with a couple of unused offices that had been hastily converted into bedrooms - which really meant nothing more than that they'd had a mattress or two chucked onto the floor inside them. And since the elevator was still broken, of course, that also meant she'd had the wonderful pleasure of climbing twenty flights of stairs from the basement up to here. By the time she'd managed that , that fact that she'd showered and cleaned up had just about been nullified.

That really wasn't the worst thing about this whole situation, though. In fact, it was probably one of the lesser inconveniences, if anything.

When the one named Kevin had decided to jump in to quote unquote 'defend' her down in the basement, Candace had been inestimably relieved - at first. Kevin was weird enough in her own ways - what with absolutely flipping out this morning when Candace'd tried to pick up Four's Perry - but at the very least she had her head on straight enough to realize that incest was not a thing that you should do.

Or so Candace had thought, at least. Because all she'd really done in the end was ramble on for a minute or two and not bother to actually sayanything at all to address the fact that there were literally three women trying to push her into a romantic relationship with her own brother. Could no one in that basement room see what was so wrong with all that? Like, seriously. She'd even have accepted Four's Phineas stepping in, but of course he wasn't going to. Just… ugh.

The idea brought a wave of bile up her throat, and she angrily smacked the pillow she'd been given. It just wasn't fair, not at all.

"Problem?" a voice came, as another Candace planted herself on the mattress directly adjacent to One's. One glanced up, trying to guess exactly which one of the seven adult Candaces it was. Had she mentioned how unfair this was? Oh, if it turned out to Three or Four or Six she was going to flip.

Thankfully, however, it wasn't. The sticker attached to the newcomer's shirt clearly marked her as 'Five', which… was a bit of a relief, if Candace was being honest. Of all the Candaces, Five was probably the least insane.

Actually, Five seemed downright sane compared to some of them, now that she thought about it. Although Five did hang out with Seven a lot for some reason, which… wasn't pleasant, considering that Seven made Candace feel distinctly uncomfortable.

"Yeah," she muttered at last, determining to take whatever advantage she could of this chance to talk to the only Candace she'd met so far who'd actually managed to remain normal and marry, well, someone who wasn't her brother, for crying out loud. Jeremy Johnson, specifically. Okay, maybe this wouldn't be so bad. After all, how disagreeable could Five really be if she'd managed to pull that off?

"Oh, let me guess," Five said, rolling her eyes. "One of those incestuous freaks tried to sell you on their twisted worldview, and they didn't take it too lightly when you refused to be a part of it?"

"Pretty much," Candace admitted with a sigh. "Pretty much."

"Ugh." Five shook her head and groaned. "Tell me about it, why dontcha? You don't want to know the amount of stuff I've heard and seen around here." She paused. "I was here once before, you know, and it was just as bad last time - maybe worse, I don't know. All I do know is that place never gets less creepy, so you kinda just suck it up." She smiled half apologetically. "Sorry, but it's true. I mean - look at me. I get to sleep in my day clothes because Four sees no problem in lending me her pajamas."

Candace blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Come on," Five replied, perhaps a smidge condescendingly. One was getting used to it these days. "Where do you think those pajamas have been? I'll give you a hint: Four's kids ."

"Oh!" Candace exclaimed as the realization of Five's point suddenly hit home. "Oh, oh, ew!" She made a face. "I guess I'd rather sleep in my day clothes too than - than that."

"You know it." Five grimaced as well. "And of course, Four acts all high and mighty and offended when I turn down her oh-so- generous offer like I should just forget about things like that ."

The mere thought was so disturbing that it sent chills up and down Candace's spine and she resolutely decided to shove it back to some dark corner of her mind and never touch it again. Never ever, ever, ever, ever .

"So," Five resumed, leaning back against the wall. "What happened with you , then?"

"Yeah…" Candace exhaled slowly. "Well, Six, she - well, it was all of them, really. Six and Three and Four. They all jumped on my case and tried to get me to break up with Jeremy and go hook up with my brother instead. Just, like - ugh." She rolled her eyes. "I don't even know. And no matter what I said, they wouldn't leave alone, and apparently no one else had a problem with that… like, seriously, that's not normal."

"No!" Five agreed emphatically. "I can't believe they'd do that." She paused and groaned. "Ugh. Well, I guess I can, really. What - what'd you say?"

"What do you think I said?" Candace exclaimed. "Really? Yeah, because I should totally leave my boyfriend for my brother - that's totally normal." Did Five really doubt her that much? Then again, she couldn't quite blame her if she did. Candace herself had never expected to run into a version of herself even remotely like either Three or Four or Six, and running into three of them just… how could there be so many universes out there where incest was acceptable ? And worst of all, what did it say about her own future?

Nothing - it said nothing at all. Not if Candace could help it. She'd been standing up to the will of the universe since she was just a little kid - and she'd stand up to it until the end of time to avoid this. No Mysterious Force would ever make her be a part of something that she didn't want to.

Which, of course, brought its own issues… considering that there had been a few times where the Force had been feeling exceptionally lazy and had hit Candace herself with a random beam from the sky, forcing her against her will to clean up whatever big and bustable project her brothers had built. She shivered again. The Force wouldn't do something like that to her again with regards to this - right? All she could do was hope, really. Such was the way of the Force.

It was just so much fun, really.

"Lemme tell you something," Five spoke up again. "I don't care what they say - you never forget how wrong that is, you hear? We're Candaces - we're not supposed to end up committing incest ." She frowned. "Well, nobody should be committing incest, of course, but you especially shouldn't."

"What're you talking about?" Candace raised her eyebrows. "Didn't I just say that I had no intention of doing anything like that? That's - it's disgusting!"

"Yes!" Five nodded rapidly. "You're, what, fifteen now?" When Candace nodded, she pressed on. "Good! When I was fifteen, I finally made my relationship with Jeremy official - you have done that, right?" Her tone was almost accusatory as she shot a pointed look at Candace.

"Yeah?" she replied. "It's been like three months, I think? It happened on the day Phineas and Ferb made that stupid pl-"

"Yeah, yeah, and they flew around the world," Five interrupted. "I remember that - I was there, you don't have to explain it to me." She paused, but then plunged forwards without giving Candace a chance to get a single word in edgewise. "Okay, have you been on a family trip to Africa yet?"

"Yes?" Candace offered uncertainly. "I thought-"

"Dangit," Five muttered. "Okay, look here then, listen up, okay?"

"-I wish you'd quit interrupting me!" Candace exclaimed. Why did this keep happening? What was with the older Candaces and constantly cutting her off at every turn? "I'm trying to answer you but you keep cutting me off!"

Five frowned and shot her a pointed look. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm trying to help you, you know? Now, think back and tell me if you-"

"-help me?" One interrupted back, quickly growing fed up with her other self's overbearing attitude. This had been happening all too often lately. Her patience with these older versions of herself was rapidly wearing thin."With what, exactly? Why do I need your help anyway?"

"Why - why do you need my help?" Five spluttered. "Have you seen what happened to Four and Three and Six? If you'd just cooperate I can make sure that doesn't happen to you ."

"Wh - what?" Candace's mouth dropped open in shock. "I don't need your help to know that I shouldn't romance my brother ! What kind of idiot do you think I am?!"

"Hey, I've got your best interests in mind here, alright?" Five retorted. "I don't see why this is such an issue for you all of the sudden!"

"I can handle my relationships, thank you very much," Candace snapped. "I don't need you telling me what to do!"

"Oh yeah?" Five crossed her arms and smiled demeaningly. "If you're so in control of everything , then tell me - how are you handling Jeremy's little sister these days, hmm?" A condescending sneer developed on her features and it really got under Candace's skin. Just who did Five think she was - prying into her life like this? Sure, she might be worried that Candace was going to turn into another weirdo, but Candace'd already made it veryclear that was not going to happen.

"I - I - just fine , thank you very much," she returned angrily. "I'll have you know that we're - we're best friends! Never better!"

"Yeah, right." Five rolled her eyes. "You're such a terrible liar, you know that? But I don't care - I'm not doing this for you. Just shut up and listen to me and you might learn a few things that you didn't know before."

"How about no?!" Candace exclaimed. "I'm tired of being told to 'shut up' - I don't want to shut up and I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you tell me what to do! You're not the boss of me!"

"I'm not trying to be the boss of you, you…" Five spat. "I'm trying to make sure you don't end up like the rest of them - having kids with your brother ! Is it that hard to understand?!"

"I - what?" Candace spluttered. "I'm fifteen - will you quit acting like my mother ? I rather think I'm capable of deciding to not commit incest , you know? I'm not stupid !"

"That's what you think," Five rejoined. "But lemme tell you what - I'll bet you money that if you went into almost any elevator in your world, you know what you would hear?" She grinned widely as she saw Candace's face pale slightly. "That's what I thought ! So you'll listen up, because I'm gonna tell you what needs to be done so that you'll turn out like me instead of them ."

"I don't wanna turn out like you!" Candace clenched her fists. "You're no better than the rest of them - always treating me like a toddler and ignoring me and pushing me around and I won't stand for it anymore!"

"Well, then fine," Five scoffed disdainfully. "Do whatever you want, for all I care. I'm sorry for assuming you didn't want to marry your brother!"

"I don't!" Candace repeated loudly. "I-" she saw an infuriating look of victory start to emerge on Five's face and it filled her with anger. No, darnit, she was not going to let another one of these adult Candaces win an argument with her! It had happened far too many times, and she was about over it. Crossing her own arms, she grinned as fiendishly as she could muster. "Well, what if I do ? What're you gonna do then?"

"Wh - what?!" Five sputtered for a moment, suddenly looking like she was about to choke on her own saliva. "You - you can't be serious!" Ah, victory was sweet. The woman looked completely off guard - if she'd ever had an opportunity, it was this one.

"What if I am?" Candace retorted, seizing on the temporary upper hand and pressing it for all it was worth. "It's not like you could stop me! I'm gonna be home, all by myself and I can do whatever I want!"

"Get real!" Five demanded. "You can't seriously want to have kids with your brother ! I'm not stupid, One!"

"And neither am I," she shot back. "And no, I do not at all want or intend to go so far as touch my brother, but that doesn't give you the right to boss me around. Just because you're older doesn't mean you're the boss of me, you know! You're think you're so brilliant - but you're just like the rest of them. You don't know anything about me!"

"I'm just trying to help," Five retorted. "I was you, smart aleck - I lived your life. I can tell you everything's that gonna happen, and tell you have to fix or avoid it. So in a way, it's like I do know everything about you." She leered. " Everything ."

"You do not ," Candace spat. "When you were fifteen, did you get pulled out of your home dimension and bundled off to stay with seven lunatics until you could get home again?" The pointed jab hung in the air for a moment, and for that moment it seemed as if the older Candace wasn't going to respond at all.

Nevertheless, although Five's eyes smoldered furiously, and her tone was low and spiteful, she eventually admitted. "No."

"Alright then." Candace crossed her arms resolutely and stood up. "I guess you don't know anything, then. So why you don't you just quit trying to run my life and butt out? It's not like we're ever going to see each other again after this anyway."

"Alright then," Five mocked. "Whatever, kid. You run off and run your relationship into the ground. It's not like I care anyway."

"I"m not going to run my relationship into the ground," Candace insisted, her face turning slightly red. "And for the last freaking time - I am not a kid !"

Why did no one get this?! She was fifteen , for crying out loud. Her brothers were kids. Their friends were kids. She was not a kid. Why did everyone insist on calling her one? Oh, 'little Candace' this and 'small Candace' that and 'kid Candace' the other. It was the most maddening thing in the world, she was pretty sure.

"For not being a kid," Five shot back. "You sure do act like one - can't even shut up and listen when it's clearly for your own good." She threw her arms in the air. "So what if my childhood was oh-so-slightly-different from yours? I was still you for long enough that I should know these things!"

"So what if you were me?" Candace retorted, her voice slowly increasing in pitch. "That still doesn't give you any right to tell me what to do! I'll have you know that everything between me and Jeremy is going wonderfully - if it's any of your business, which most definitely is not ."

"Not my business?" Five seemed dumbfounded, as if Candace had just said something profoundly idiotic. "What do you mean it's not my business? Have you even been here for the past day? Think, Candace - use your brain for once in your life. I should think that keeping as many of my other selves away from their brothers as possible is everyone's business. And that includes me."

"And I already told you that I was going to stay with Jeremy!" Candace just about reached her limit with this insufferable woman - she was starting to see why Four had such a dim view of her. Not that Four was really any better herself, but you gotta pick your battles. "I don't know why you're being so stubborn about this whole thing?! Are you deaf? How many times do I have to repeat myself before you believe me?" She rolled her eyes. "I swear that I don't know how even Jeremy can stand you! It must be absolutely awful for him to put up with you all the time."

Five visibly flinched at that. " What did you just say?" she snapped. "Come on, kid. Enlighten me - what exactly makes you think that it's 'awful', hm?"

Oh, this woman did not want to go here with Candace. "Well," she started, putting her hands on her hips. "Let's see. Maybe because you're bossy and arrogant and oh-so-full of yourself? Think that might have anything to do with it - why no one likes you?"

"I - you - what?" Five spluttered. "Now, you listen to me, girl. You have no idea what you're talking about - so you'd better just buzz off and annoy someone else for a change. My relationship with my husband is none of your business - and even if it was, well, so it's not perfect . Who's is? But least it's healthy and not incestuous or blatantly codependent like I know you are right now with him." She laughed harshly. "May I say - get a life? Quit stalking him? Because I will say that - because unlike you, I did get over those things."

Candace clenched her fists tightly. She did not just go there. Oh, she did? That was going to be something she regretted, for sure.

"Well, aren't you just perfect ," she spat, starting to see red. "Wouldn't be such a shame if you stalked him for years before you could work up the guts to even look directly at him? Oh, wait - you did that. Because you're me, right? And all my business is your business? Fair enough."

" Shut up ," Five hissed. "What do you think you're going to accomplish here? All you know about me is what went on in your life up to know. That's it ."

So it was. Candace blinked once, then twice as a thought occurred to her. She smiled slightly. All she did know of Five was what she'd lived so far, but that was all she needed, really. After all, Candace herself had her own fair share of worries and anxieties about her relationship with Jeremy - but that wasn't important right. Right now, she just wanted to best someone in an argument, and it was looking like that person would be Candace Five.

Fair enough.

The woman was nothing more than an arrogant, self-centered control freak anyway - but she was an arrogant, self-centered control freak with whom Candace shared many things - a name, a childhood, an identity, and a good chunk of her life to boot.

"You're right," she retorted. "And maybe that's how I know absolutely pathetic you are without him. Because, really, you wanna call mecodependent? At least I have a life outside of him - and, oh, it looks like you've done nothing but ramble on and on about him since the second I met you! What, can you not go one second without needing him to think for you?"

"I do not !" Five drew back and stood up, almost towering over Candace, but the teenager refused to back down. If she lost this argument, here, she'd never have another chance. This wasn't one she could afford to lose. "And even if I do - so what ? He's my husband , and maybe it's because I'm in a healthy , normal , functioning relationship with him!"

"Maybe," Candace scoffed. "Or maybe it's because you're so ridiculously anxious that something's gonna steal him away that you can't do anything but obsess over him day in and day out like some kind of no-life worrywart that'll never achieve anything because you're too busy chasing him down at any given second."

"I am not ! How dare -"

"What do you think he's doing right now ?" Candace asked spitefully. "I'll bet you anything in the world that he's sitting there at that house relieved that for once his absolute lunatic of partner is gone, giving him some peace and quiet for once!"

"That - that is not true!" Five exclaimed, jamming her hands down into her pockets. "We've been married for years now - he loves me, and I knowit! He said so himself!"

"That's what you think," Candace retorted, remembering a few months back to her trip around the globe in her brother's plane. "But you don't know for sure , do you?" Five hesitated for just a second, but Candace didn't - not anymore. The time for hesitation was over. "No, no you don't. Because I know you drive him batty half - no, all the time - and he's just grateful he can get a chance to catch his breath before you get back to torture him anymore."

"I-" Five stammered. "No! You - you - you've got it all wrong, you - you know-nothing!"

"Oh, do I?" Candace asked coldly. "I hardly think I do. Because deep down, you know he's just tolerating you, don't you? Don't you?" When Five's face paled slightly, Candace knew she'd just about won. "He's probably only sticking around anymore 'cause of your kids anyway," she spat. "Nobody'd stick with me for that long. And don't you dare try to deny it, because you know good and well that it's true, don't you?"

"You - you shut your mouth!" Five just about shouted, pointing a finger accusatorily in Candace's direction. Her arm was shaking, though - the night was won.

"What?" she asked mockingly, still not feeling even the slightest tinge of sympathy for this utterly disagreeable woman. Let her suffer the the way that Two and Three and Four and Five and Six and Seven and Kevin had made Candace suffer, that was the way she looked at it. "You know who we are. Paranoid, delusional, hallucinating, flighty, neurotic, constantly distracted and always overbearing. Does that really sound like a description of a person Jeremy could ever really fall in love with? No? I thought not." She narrowed her eyes. "Face it, Five. These are the facts - you're all of those things, aren't you? Then why, oh why, would you ever for a second think even Jeremy would stick with you? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

Five opened her mouth, her eyes burning with indiscriminate fury, her face pale and waxy, and her limbs trembling. But before she could so much as a single word out, the door behind them creaked open, and Candace spun around to face the newcomer. It was Candace Seven - the glitched one.

"He- wait…" Seven narrowed her eyes. "What exactly is going on in here?"

Candace scoffed harshly, in almost the same manner that Seven herself often did, though she couldn't quite manage to match the older woman's vitriol. "It's none of your business, so butt out!" She was riding high on the exhilaration. She'd just singlehandedly waded into an argument with one of her older selves and left the woman speechless - a resounding victory by almost any standards, and certainly good enough for Candace. That would teach Five to constantly try to trample over her anymore.

"S - seven!" Five sputtered, tripping over her words somewhat. "This - this brat , she - she -"

"What did you do?" Seven demanded fiercely, staring hard into Candace's eyes, flickering in and out as she did so.

Candace didn't back down. She was swept up in a heady rush of adrenaline and put her hands on her hips again, snorting in the face of the temporal anomaly . "I told her the truth - the truth that her precious husband no doubt can't stand her because there's no way someone as wonderful as he would ever stoop so low as someone like me and look at her - she's an absolute wreck!" Candace shot a pointed glance at Five. "And she can't deny it - you can't deny it, can you? I thought - WAGH!"

However Candace might have expected the other woman to react, she hadn't been expecting this . Seven's eyes had gone icy cold in about one second, and she reached down and grabbed the collar of Candace's too-small pajama top and hefted her bodily off the ground, right up into her face. "You do not ," the woman hissed into her face. "I repeat, you do not talk about my husband like that."

"You - you put me down this instant!" Candace demanded, straining to touch the floor. "Or I'll - I'll - WHOA!"

Seven's eyes grew even harder and she half-shoved, half-threw the girl out the door of the office. Candace stumbled backwards, collapsing to the floor in a heap, banging her head on the wall across the hallway. With a resounding slam, the door banged shut, leaving her alone in the darkness, rubbing her the rapidly growing lump on her head. "Ow!" She winced.

Well, that was the end of that, apparently.

But all was not lost. Because before that jerk Seven had shown up, she'd still managed to meet Five on her own terms and absolutely demolish the woman in an argument. And it had felt good - taking her frustration at the all the weirdness of this dimension and the constant exposure to incest and everyone ignoring her out on something. On Candace Five. At least the woman would think twice before she tried anything in the future.

Still, as the adrenaline of the moment drained away, and she clambered back to her feet in the dark hallway, rubbing her aching head, she realized what else had just happened.

She'd been kicked - well, thrown - flat out of her own bedroom, the bedroom that she had picked for herself in here. Where was she supposed to sleep now ?

"Ugh," she muttered to herself. "What is with my other selves and committing incest? I swear if they had even the ounce of sense that it took to notdo that, everything would be fine."

By this point, she would almost rather be back in Four's kids' bed than have to deal with this.

...no, scratch that. She'd sleep outside in the rain on the concrete in the middle of the highway before she'd sleep in a bed with those kids again. It wasn't so much the kids themselves, really, as what they represented - a potential path for her future that she had never so much as dreamed of, and now was constantly being rubbed in her face and crammed down her throat as being 'in her best interests'. No! Just...no! Never - not in a million, billion, quadrillion years.

Well, whatever. What was done was done - and she'd just have to find somewhere else to sleep, since she somewhat doubted that either Five or Seven would be much inclined to let her back into their room to drag her bed out. Her mattress out, really. Frowning to herself, Candace reached the pajama pants pocket and pulled out her phone.

The battery was almost dead, but the dim light of the screen still provided enough light to see. She randomly chose another one of the office doors and tested the knob. The door swung in gently, and she peeked inside.

There was a mattress on the floor, and there was a Candace curled up on, fast asleep. Whoever it was, she was groaning to herself and jerking her limbs rapidly in her sleep. It didn't look very restful to Candace. If she was tossing and turning that badly, then she'd probably appreciate Candace waking her up and asking for help anyway.

As she stepped into the room, however, the glow from her phone glinted off the pile of clothes draped carelessly over a chair. Well, it didn't glint so much off the clothes as off the large glossy nametag sticker stuck to them - one clearly inscribed 'Three' in thick black lines.

Oh, no. There was no way in heck that was happening. Candace'd had quite enough of Three and Four and Six during the day. She was not dealing with them at night too. She resolutely abandoned that office, shutting the door behind her. Someone else would have to do.

She'd walked to the next door and was just about to try the knob when all of the sudden, a firm grip clapped down on her shoulder. She jumped what felt like fifty feet in the air, and would have no doubt screamed, too, but someone's hand was placed over her mouth, and the stifled noise that managed to get out was barely audible at all. A vice-like grip crushed her against her against her assailant's body, twisting her left arm to a highly uncomfortable degree behind her back in the process.

"You idiot ," a voice hissed in her ear. "What you have done if I'd been a NORMbot? Or even an assassin? You'd be so dead. You can't go sneaking around at night unless you're prepared for these sorts of things."

Candace couldn't resist rolling her eyes. Of course - Candace Two. Did the woman ever sleep? Apparently not. She reached up with her free arm and tried to peel Two's hand away from her mouth, but would doubtless have failed, had Two not relaxed her grip and dropped her hand herself.

"What are you ev- mmph !" she tried, before Two clapped her hand back over her mouth.

"Do you even understand the concept of being quiet?" the woman whispered. "I swear you would be the most useless soldier ever." She cleared her throat softly. "I'm going to give you another chance, but this time let's keep your voice down , okay?"

Candace nodded reluctantly and wiped her mouth disgustedly as soon Two did so, trying to get rid of the lingering taste of soot and gunpowder left behind. "Sorry," she whispered sarcastically, rolling her eyes again. Whatever - it was too late for this. "Look, Two, do you know where there's an extra bed? I got, uh, kicked out of my bedroom, kinda."

Two reached up and adjusted her sunglasses. Wait, seriously? There wasn't even a window to let in the moonlight and the woman was still wearing those freaking sunglasses? Yes, yes she was. Well, whatever. That was hardly the strangest or most annoying thing about her for sure. If she wanted to wear her glasses, then let her, if only she could stop being so - so Two . That was the only way Candace could think to describe it.

She wondered briefly about the possibility of trying to argue her position with Two as well, but decided against it after just a second of thought. By the dim light of her phone screen, she could see that Two still had that stupid stick of hers, and she knew from painful experience that the older woman was hardly unwilling to use it. After Seven had literally thrown her out of that office room, Candace'd had quite enough of that.

Besides, she really did know nothing about Two, which would make it ridiculously hard to successfully beat the woman in an argument the way she'd bested Five.

"What did you do?" Two asked coolly. Something about her collected tone worked to get under Candace's skin, but she grit her teeth and ignored it as best as she was able.

"I didn't do anything," she replied softly. "And it wouldn't matter if I did! It'd be none of your business anyway. I just need a place to sleep."

Two frowned. "Whatever, kid. I don't have time for this or for you." She paused and seemed to be thinking for a moment - at least as far as Candace could tell without being able to see her eyes. "Well, I'll tell you what. Because I'm feeling exceptionally friendly tonight, I'll give you my bed. It's not like I had any intention of using it anyway."

"That works for me," Candace replied. "I just want a place to sleep - I can't say I really care so much about where it is, so long as it's nowhere near Three or Four or Six - or their children . Then I'm pretty much good." She shuddered slightly as she contemplated the subject.

"Listen, kid," Two remarked, rather offhandedly. "In life you gotta deal with kinds of nasty stuff. You have learn what's important and what's not. And if it's not important, you don't waste your energy on it." She paused, shrugging slightly. "The fact that these other 'mes' ended up sleeping with their kid brothers is certainly an uncommendable course of action. But right now? That's not what's important. And neither is talking to you - so I really don't have time to think about either." Two straightened up and pointed at one of the doors in the hallway. "That's the one I was supposed to sleep in. There's a pallet in there. You can sleep on that, I suppose."

Candace nodded slightly. "Fine. Thanks."

"Mmm hmm," Two only grunted in reply. She pushed Candace towards the aforementioned door and roughly patted her on the shoulder in such a way that it felt more like she was smacking her. "You're a lucky kid."

"Yeah, sure, thanks," Candace repeated wincing and rubbing her shoulder as Two resolutely turned and strode off down the hallway. She pushed open the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her as quietly as she could muster. It really was getting late, and after the time she'd gotten to bed last night - well, the fact that it hadn't been so much last night as this morning probably said all that it needed to say.

Candace collapsed onto the mattress with a sigh, breathing deeply and eventually sighing.

Could her life possibly get any crazier? It was something she'd thought many, many times before, but now it really did seem to have reached the peak point of crazy, beyond which it could extend no farther. And the worst part of it all was that she knew good and well that no one would ever hear her story of all she'd suffered - because she'd never tell anyone anyway.

Because, oh yeah, for sure her brothers and their friends and Stacy and Jeremy would believe her - she didn't really doubt that one. It'd been a longsummer, after all. But what was she supposed to say, or to do? Walk up to her brothers and say, "Hey, Phineas, did you know that I went into another dimension in which you and I were married and had children?"

Like, seriously.

She swallowed nervously as she lay there on the mattress trying to sleep. Candace Six's brief mention of the Mysterious Force came back to her, echoing her ears like some sort of waterfall or something. Apparently the Force itself was trying to push her into a romance with her kid brother? How - how was that even fair? She was a fifteen year old girl - how could she be expected to fight back against the machinations of the universe itself? Time and again she tried, and had always failed.

Always, always, always. It was just the way her life her worked.

But she couldn't let it win - not over busting, but especially not over this. What had she ever done to deserve this?

 _I don't know ,_ a small voice in her head whispered. _Maybe you tried to circumvent the laws of nature and defy the Force by trapping it in a time loop, and now it's coming back to make you pay._

Her eyes widened slightly as she lay on the bed. That… was not good. And it was a distinct possibility, for sure. The Force was nothing if not vindictively cruel and endlessly petty. Would it - would it really go this far in an effort to make her miserable? She couldn't say for sure whether it would, but she couldn't deny that it would not , either.

And as she turned onto her side and desperately tried to drown those thoughts in the void of sleep, that was not an idea conducive to sweet dreams.


	19. A Brand New Reality

As this story has shown with crystal clarity thus far, there are many dimensions that exist across the multiverse. Some are boring and remarkably empty, some are vibrant and tumultuous. Some are only slightly different from what the reader might deem to be familiar, and others are entirely different in ways that he or she couldn't even begin to comprehend.

The dimensions encompassed in this tale are very different, from the dark and gloomy surroundings of Two's and Six's worlds to the creative optimism inherent in Three's and Four's. The characters have lead different lives and have had profoundly different experiences. But yet, within the Flynn family at least, there was at least one constant in all seven dimensions that now faced the latest mishap that had befallen the space-time continuum.

For every girl, there was a boy.

For every older sister, there was a younger brother.

For every Candace, there was a Phineas.

The character of Phineas Flynn was, of all characters woven into this story, perhaps the most consistent between dimensions (Well, unless you counted Ferb. Ferbs never changed.) Almost no matter where you went, Phineas was always calm, laid-back, optimistic, and creative. His head was a triangle, his hair was red and he was a scientific genius, always ready to take charge of a situation but always doing so in a way that could cause no offense to anyone around him.

Most importantly of all, he always loved his family dearly, including his older sister. But the fact that all these Candaces had been ripped away from their home worlds had different consequences and created different reactions in different Phineases, depending on the backgrounds that shaped them and their actions.

For Phineas One, it was the first day of autumn that followed the last day of summer. And although in many ways it had been a normal and entirely enjoyable day for him and for everyone around him (well, except for his teachers, who had started counting down the days to the next summer vacation within ten minutes of him unleashing his enthusiasm and technological capabilities on them) something bothered him all day. However, it wasn't until he had already gone to bed that he realized what that thing was.

Candace. He hadn't seen her… he - when had he last seen her?

Candace was gone. Somehow, somewhere. But that much was unmistakable.

"Hey Ferb?"

Phineas' stepbrother rolled over to face him, making no sound as always but by his facial expression still indicating that he was listening. Phineas bit his lip, trying to think up a logical explanation for this phenomenon but not coming up with one. There had to be a reason their sister was absent, right? They hadn't even missed her before and their parents hadn't mentioned her, so it could hardly be a big deal… could it?

"Have you seen Candace today?" he asked, trying to dispel the discomfort in his mind. Ferb thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. "Yeah, that's what I thought. The last time I really remember seeing her was… I don't know, yesterday morning probably? But my recollection gets really fuzzy after that. I guess it might have been because we were busy with our projects for yesterday and today, but even so I would think I would have noticed before if she'd just gotten up and left. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"

Ferb shrugged, which was enough to make Phineas really uncomfortable. If even Ferb didn't know what could have happened to their sister, they were really in trouble. Why was it that he hadn't thought of this before?

He supposed that they really had been busy today, though. After all, they'd gone to school for the morning and afternoon, and then they had built that project before dinnertime. And if he hadn't noticed Candace's absence during dinner… well, he supposed that he might have noticed on a superficial level, but that he would simply have figured that she'd gone to eat with one of her friends after school. That was only natural, after all. Candace had spent a lot of time with him and Ferb over the summer and he'd enjoyed it immensely, and he had always appreciated it when she started the day off by saying that she wasn't going to join them and she later did anyway, but she did have other friends like Stacy and Jenny to hang out with.

But now, it was midnight, and the fact that Candace had been absent for over a day was becoming rapidly apparent. And Phineas didn't like it one bit.

"Do you think we should wake Mom and Dad?" he asked Ferb. He hadn't heard their parents talk about Candace's absence all day, which probably indicated that they knew where she was and that it wasn't anything to worry about, but he still felt uneasy about the whole thing.

Ferb shook his head. "Either they know, and then it's nothing to worry about or to wake them up for, or they don't, and us telling them will only cause potentially unnecessary concern. And the chance of it not being the former is very much slim in any case."

Huh. That was a good point. They really didn't want to upset their parents over this, especially if it later turned out that Candace was perfectly fine – and really, why shouldn't she be? "I guess that means you don't think it's a good idea to start working on something to find her right now either, do you?" Ferb shook his head again – boy, was he expressive tonight. Phineas supposed that must have been because it was dark and he couldn't express himself in a more restrained way. "Well, okay then. We'll wait until tomorrow morning. And if she isn't back by then, we'll get right to work on finding her."

Ideas were already twirling through his head. A tracking device and a teleporter were an obvious first idea, but if for whatever reason that didn't work out there were plenty of other options. Going back in time to see where Candace had disappeared off to or to save her if something had happened to her, or even simply writing a song the way they had done for Perry, if Candace had run away from home.

That thought stopped him short, though. Because with Perry, arranging a choir on the top of Danville's highest building and singing a song about how much they all missed him had been easy. But with Candace… well, she had plenty of friends that would want her to come back, so Phineas had no doubt that they could get the people they needed – maybe they could even do it under school time and get Candace's high school teachers to participate. But where would he start with writing a song? Just listing all the reasons his sister was awesome and he wanted her to come back would take all day. Maybe he should leave that part to Ferb. Ferb was always the best at saying meaningful things in a concise way, like he was the best with many things, really. But that was okay, because there were no people in whose shadow Phineas would rather stand than his two siblings.

Ferb, and Candace. Candace, who was gone right now and of whose location he was unsure. Candace, whose absence meant that even as Ferb slept soundly, Phineas' eyes kept snapping back open. It was silly, of course, because Phineas knew there was no way his sister could be in real danger, not after what happened that summer. She'd become Queen of Mars, conquered her fear of spiders, acquired a boyfriend (which did not seem to him to be such a great accomplishment, but it had apparently been very important to her), and she'd wrestled an alligator. He was sure she'd laugh if she saw how antsy he was getting for no reason at all.

Phineas felt Perry's beak prodding against his hand, and he lifted his arm to allow their pet to snuggle underneath it. Perry's soft fur helped him calm down. Candace was fine. And if it turned out that for whatever reason she wasn't, he knew what to do. The world was filled with possibilities, and he was prepared to exhaust them.

Because Phineas Flynn would always do anything for his sister.

Another world, another place, identical concerns.

For Phineas Two, this night was supposed to mark the end of the first day of a 'family vacation' – something which was a practically revolutionary concept entirely. The idea of getting away from Danville (even if just by a few miles to a nearby lakeshore) to a place where they wouldn't need to worry (as much) or constantly look over their shoulders (as often) was something new and incredible to even consider.. It had taken him months of bargaining and signed agreements from all staff at OWCA that they would double their vigilance during their leader's absence, and there weren't that many places to go anyway, nor were places left standing after the Oppression particularly different from home anyway. But there was a small collection buildings outside of town and near the shores of the Great Lake, so it was fine. Because he was with his sister, and his sister was finally getting some much deserved rest.

Or at least, that had been the theory. Because it was only the second day when Phineas Flynn had barely gotten a chance to slumber before he abruptly woke up and realized something: that he had no idea where his sister was, and looking back he couldn't tell whether he had even seen her all day. The last time he knew for sure that he'd seen his older sister was when they all went to the swimming pool immediately after their arrival yesterday morning and he'd been unable to persuade her to take off her sunglasses while diving underwater, leading to her leaving the pool just three minutes after entering it – which he suspected had been her plan from the start.

But anyway, that was the last time he knew he had seen her, and when he woke Ferb and rushed into Candace's bedroom he found it empty, with no signs that the bed had even been slept upon. Even other obvious resting places such as the chair in the corner, the closet or the space underneath the bed were no warmer than their environments. Candace had obviously been gone for a while.

Their first thought – or hope, maybe – was that Candace had simply sneaked out on them and gone back home. But one quick call to OWCA had disproven that theory. Which left the second option, one which was far more terrifying – kidnapping.

Well, they knew what to do in that situation. Major Monogram had immediately agreed to send a squad of his best agents (with the emergency passwords that Phineas and Ferb had had to drill into their minds ever since they changed last month, of course) to pick them up and transport them to OWCA's bunkers, while Phineas and Ferb were instructed to wait in the basement in the meantime – the motel rooms, no matter what bars Candace had placed before the windows, had proven to be obviously unsafe. And that had left the two of them down in the basement, alone, waiting for transport to a secure location.

But it wasn't his own security that Phineas was concerned about.

"We knew that going out here could be a risk to our safety, Ferb… not just yours and mine, but hers too" he said, his voice shaky. "We should have done more. I… maybe she was right and we should never have come here in the first place, but when we did, we shouldn't have had different rooms. Someone should have been in Candace's room all night to raise alarm when needed. I should have been there for her, but I wasn't."

Ferb just looked at him for a few moments. Then he raised an eyebrow and gave his brother a small, barely noticeable smile.

Phineas blushed, being well aware of what Ferb was referring to. "This isn't about that" he replied. "And it was never as bad as you make it out to be. I remember how you looked at those fugitive pictures of Doofenshmirtz's daughter, so it's not like you didn't have a thing for an older girl – and one who's fighting against us, no less? You were way out-embarrassing me there, bro." Granted, Phineas knew that Ferb's infatuation with Vanessa Doofenshmirtz had been a lot less noticeable and shorter-lasting than his own awkward crush on his older sister, but both of them had been a product of hormones and puberty, and both of them were over now. "This was supposed to be a family trip, for family purposes. Just us and Candace. Why else did you ask Isabella to stay home?"

Ferb shrugged, conceding the point.

"I mean, I don't even know what I would have done, or could have done," Phineas continued. "Maybe all I could have done was waking her up before… whatever it was happened. If she was even there at the time, I don't know. I can't even remember seeing her since yesterday morning, Ferb. What does that say about me? What does that say about the kind of brother I am?" Ferb gave him a pointed look. "I mean, of course I know it's always been Candace's job to protect us, and I don't even want to claim that I could have done that any better than she has. She's awesome." He briefly smiled.

"But even if Candace has always been the one to look out for us and shield us from harm, that doesn't mean we can't do anything" he continued, a note of recollection creeping into his voice as an old memory occurred to him "Remember the Phineas and Ferb from the other dimension, the ones who helped Candace take down Doofenshmirtz in the first place? They were much more competent than we were. And I know we have different lives than they did, but that's no reason we can't do some of the things that they did. Because right now, we pretty much have to."

Ferb remained quiet, allowing Phineas to mull that over. Yes, they would soon be safe in OWCA's most secure bunkers. But even from there, they would be able to monitor the information the organization got in about their leader's whereabouts. And as soon as they knew where Candace was, they would jump into action. Phineas had no doubt that his sister wouldn't be happy with that because she'd always told them to stay safe and keep their heads down, but he also had no doubt that it was the right thing to do, and for that he was more than willing to face her wrath, as uncomfortable as the idea was

They would get out there. They would track down Doofenshmirtz. And if it turned out that Candace had been hurt, or worse…

…well, then Heinz Doofenshmirtz would be in for the unpleasant discovery that Candace Flynn was not the only member of her family that he should be afraid of.

Because Phineas Flynn would always do anything for his sister.

Another world, another place, identical concerns.

For Phineas Three, the past day had seemed entirely normal. He'd cleaned up the Ferris Wheel in the backyard as he'd been asked to do, rewrote the laws of physics for what had to be the thousandth time (at least by now they were written in with a pencil) to entertain Xavier, who was feeling down for whatever reason after something had happened with his and Amanda's project at school, and finally he had gone to bed and fallen asleep.

It was all very normal, and Phineas had readily settled in for a good night's rest. Until around midnight a voice echoed in his head, and he abruptly shot awake.

It had been Candace's voice, of that he had no doubt – he would recognize it anywhere. And she'd been crying out for his help, the way she often did whenever she had nightmares, even if this cry had been of an intensity that he hadn't heard for a long time. Phineas immediately went into action, rolling over to his side all the while wondering what was wrong, until he abruptly became aware that his sister wasn't there at all.

Why was Candace gone? Her half of the bed was empty, but more than that, it was cold. As he rolled over the place Candace would otherwise be to get out of bed, he noticed that the temperature of the mattress was so low that he doubted she'd been sleeping there tonight at all. (He also noticed a diode array pressing against his side. That was strange – they rarely misplaced diode arrays, and especially not in their bed. He'd have to ask the kids if this was their idea of a prank… but that question could be saved until later.)

Phineas got up into a sitting position at the edge of his bed, forcing himself to think clearly about what had just happened. He'd heard his sister call out for him, and now she was gone. And come to think of it, he couldn't at all remember when he had last seen her. Well, yes, they'd had breakfast together yesterday morning, but obviously he would have had to have seen her around since then. Either for yesterday's project, or for today's… but even though he recalled the details of both with perfect clarity, he couldn't remember Candace participating at all. She might have gone off to do something all by herself, something which could also explain her absence, but the more Phineas thought about that theory the more he realized that it didn't make any sense.

He had to figure this out. Candace always came through for him in emergencies, so he had to do the same for her. His sister had been gone for… well, probably up to forty hours, possibly less but definitely over the thirty-hour mark. She would have told him where she was going if this had been a planned trip. He briefly entertained the thought that this could be a surprise of some sorts, but if that was the case, surely wouldn't Candace have gone through even more effort to cover up her absence, rather than leaving without a trace? No, the surprise theory was right out. Which made it likely that Candace had left involuntarily. He'd have to check with Xavier and Amanda to be sure, but involuntary departure was currently the likeliest theory – ergo, kidnapping.

Phineas had no idea why anyone would want to kidnap his sister, aside from Mitch (Or maybe that guy whose kidnapping of Klimpaloon they had prevented, and then had ended up turning into a warthog, somehow. Or possibly even the Martians, if they suddenly wanted to get Candace back as their queen full-time, which would be an understandable sentiment and not inconceivable given how little they truly knew them. Or Khaka Peu Peu, returning from long retirement, or even anyone else who wanted to turn the person closest to him into a hostage. Hmm, turned out that there were more people inclined to kidnap Candace than he'd thought there would be.)

But motives and identities of possible kidnappers were of secondary importance when compared to the risk that this posed to Candace's well-being. The storm cellar incident was far too fresh in Phineas' mind, and if she'd been gone and cut off from inventing equipment for almost forty hours … it was too horrifying to contemplate. Almost as bad was the possibility that, being denied a chance to invent something normal for so long, Candace had simply snapped at some point, broken free from her kidnappers and used her skills (which, come to think of it, might be another reason for why she was kidnapped in the first place) to wreak havoc against the ones who had put her there.

Was that why he'd heard her cry for help only to wake up to find no one there? Because after ransacking her kidnappers' hideout, Candace had managed to find enough material to cobble together a mental communication device so that she could project her message directly into his mind? That was entirely possible. (Although rather unlikely – it seemed to Phineas that it would have been much simpler for her to simply build a teleporter instead. But maybe she just hadn't had those materials, or maybe she simply wasn't thinking straight at the time.)

He was about to head over to the kids' bedroom to inform them of what had happened, when another thought struck him – that the whole kidnapping theory still didn't explain why Candace had been absent for so long without him noticing. Had the people who had done this brainwashed him somehow? No, that couldn't be it. Because then they would have had to target Amanda and Xavier as well, and Ferb… because neither of them had said something to him all day today or yesterday. Granted, Ferb wasn't normally one to speak much anyway, but Phineas was sure that he would have said something if he'd noticed their sister's absence. Which made the brainwashing theory increasingly unlikely, as well as the fact that it wore off right now, right when he'd heard Candace's voice reach out to him.

Then what could it be? How could Candace have been gone without anyone noticing for over a full day? Why were his memories so fuzzy when he looked back at yesterday, when he remembered the start of the day – that breakfast with Candace – much more clearly? That didn't make any sense. In fact, the only reasons anyone would have fuzzy memories could be because of time travel – which he knew no one had been doing all day – or…

Oh.

The memory of that journey to the non-dimension twenty-one years ago uncomfortably crept into Phineas' mind. This was… this was entirely possible. There was no rift open that he knew of – which would be easy enough to check once he'd built a tracker for it – but only one was needed to suck his sister in, after all, and the theory matched his fuzzy memory exactly.

Well, he supposed that at least that meant Candace wasn't kidnapped – and most likely she had been able to invent as well, given that the non-dimension was probably still filled with all the things they had left behind there all that time ago. And given that he could remember her again now, his sister had obviously also managed to escape that dreadful place to get back into the space-time continuum.

But that raised a new question – if Candace had already managed to get out of the non-dimension, shouldn't she be back home by now? She'd be weary, tired and probably soaking wet given the weather, but she'd be safe. Phineas knew it should definitely be possible for her to be back already, especially given that he couldn't see his sister's phone anywhere so he presumed that she had it on her. (And after that one near-death experience seventeen years ago, neither of them had been much inclined to leave their phones – particularly Candace's – anywhere but in their pockets.)

Candace, however, wasn't home yet. Which meant that in all likelihood, she had managed to get out only to find herself in another dimension, much like the three of them had all those years ago. It could be the same dimension, or it could be entirely another one. That was… disconcerting. Sure, it had only been one day, maybe less, so he couldn't fault her for not being able to invent something to get home yet . But the thought still discomforted him that his sister could be out there, in a dimension which he knew nothing about, a dimension that might not even have pizzazium infinionite or mundanium finite or anything that would allow her to get anywhere close to getting home.

And then there was the fact that his sister had apparently just spent some time – probably around a day, given the fact that the temporal memory disassociation had caught up to him within a day and a half of her disappearance, but he didn't really remember whether he'd checked if time in the non-dimension ran slower than it did here so it might have been a little bit longer – in that terrible grey place, secure in the knowledge that her own lover had forgotten who she was. That could give rise to all kinds of nervous breakdowns and nightmares – possibly even including thenightmare. Phineas didn't like thinking about it, but it would explain the sheer terror in the scream for help he had heard, plus the fact that said scream had managed to breach dimensions at all. If Candace was somewhere out there in another dimension, desperately needing him, and he wasn't there…

No. He could not allow himself to be sidetracked by all the things Candace could be going through when he needed to get her out of there as soon as possible. It was the middle of the night now and he felt exhausted – he really regretted spending so much time on an entirely mundane invention this afternoon, but he supposed that given that the forces of space-time themselves were conspiring against him there really was no way he could have known – but he'd wake the kids, write down their plans and first thing in the morning the three of them would get to work on them.

In all likelihood, that would mean one of two things. Either they'd have to follow her into the non-dimension and try to figure out where she had gone (although that would be problematic for a number of reasons) or else they'd have to do something that was more simple and more complex at the same time – building a machine that would allow him to track down his sister's quantum ion signature across other universes. He had no idea whether it was even a workable idea, but with help from Ferb and the kids, Phineas knew it was possible that he could pull it off.

He had to pull it off. For Candace's sake.

Because Phineas Flynn would always do anything for his sister.

Another world, another place, identical concerns.

For Phineas Five, the dawn of autumn had brought with it the usual array of contracts for his highly valued special effects services. By now, significant proportions of movie fandoms were looking forwards towards watching new films more for the effect work Phineas had managed to put into them rather than for the story or the characters. On a more personal level, the dawn of autumn had reminded him that a full year had passed since the last summer had shook up his life in such a profound way, and he still hadn't fully managed to resolve his issues with either of his siblings or with his wife. Although he and Isabella were really trying this couple counseling thing and they'd booked great progress, their counselor still didn't think all their issues had been fully taken care of – and Phineas couldn't help but think sometimes that the man was right.

Of course, all those thoughts had dissipated when Jeremy called at half past eleven that evening to tell him that Candace had gone missing. He'd immediately called off his impending trip to Mumbai and he had spent at least half an hour coming up with plans to track his sister down. Isabella had started out being entirely supportive but she had gradually become more irritated, and eventually she had informed him in no uncertain terms that he should come to bed with her because he wasn't going to be of much use to Candace dead on his feet. That was true, of course, but Phineas still couldn't help but worry about his sister even as Isabella fell asleep next to him, curled up in his arms.

Shortly after hearing the clock downstairs chime two times, Phineas found himself standing in the midst of a familiar building – SHED. He had been there a couple of times since helping Other Dimension Candace get back home, and although he had finally broken it down last month to move all the stuff inside it to his own garage, it was restored and in pristine condition now. As Phineas was trying to figure out how this could be possible, he heard the door creak open. He spun around to discover the identity of the intruder.

It was none other than himself.

Other Phineas smiled as he walked over to his counterpart, giving the place around them an appreciative look. "So, this is what the mindscape looks like, huh?" he said. "The way my Candace talked about it I would have expected some kind of white void instead. I guess she was just too focused on that argument with your sister to notice – or possibly create – anything else."

Phineas blinked, trying to distill his other self's words into coherent points with which he could make sense of his surroundings. One – he was probably dreaming. That made sense, considering that he had been in his bed just a short time ago. Two, he was accosted by another version of himself, who mentioned 'his Candace' and an argument with Phineas' own sister. The thought immediately sent him back in time by about a year, and it wasn't difficult for him to fill in the blanks.

"You're the Phineas from that other dimension, aren't you?" he said. "The one in which you and Candace were in a romantic relationship." He blinked, staring at the man opposite him who… well, who reminded him very much of himself. Perhaps a little more energetic, but still essentially 'Phineas Flynn'. "It's… nice? To see you? Did something go wrong with the mind transmitter again?" He frowned. "Wait… is this about Candace? She went missing last night, and we don't know where she is, so…"

"Yes, I agree, and yes" Other Phineas said, chuckling for a moment before he gave Phineas a more serious look. "Your sister and my sister, along with a few others, got sucked into non-dimensional space – you know, like what happened the last day of the summer of 2010?" Phineas contemplated that for a moment and then nodded. "That's why you guys didn't realize that she was gone any sooner. One of their other counterparts managed to get them out of that place and bring them to our world, stranding them here. They're all safe here at Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, but I figured that if I could make the mental connection work again, I really owed it to you to make contact and inform you. But don't worry," he hastily added, no doubt seeing the slight twitch on his other self's face that indicated his discomfort, "the machine is perfectly safe now. I'm 99.9999984327 percent sure that we will be able to disconnect without problems."

Phineas decided not to mention that such odds would leave disconnection problems pretty much impossible – and that impossible odds were the very things they always defied. Well, used to defy, at any rate. Even if he supposed that his counterpart still did it.

"So, Candace ended up in your dimension again, only physically this time?" he replied. "I don't suppose she was very happy with that."

Other Phineas shook his head. "No, she's been… a little on edge ever since she got here. Apparently what Candace and I do really upset her last time. I'd hoped that she'd managed to get used to it by now, but she just keeps hanging out with a version of herself that spends most of her time yelling at everyone and who, for some reason, seems to think that I only have her worst interests at heart. I don't think your sister thinks that, but she's been distant nonetheless."

"Well, I can't say that my own response to… to your relationship with your sister was one of complete acceptance" Phineas replied. "It still sounds so odd to me, that across the multiverse a version of me actually ended up in a relationship with Candace . My own sister . No offense, of course – I'm sure you and your sister are happy together, and I don't want to intrude on that."

"None taken," Other Phineas said with a smile. "And if we're going to be completely honest with each other, then I should probably say that the fact that you don't invent anymore feels weird to me . I mean, inventing is who we are, to a large extent. Apparently, there's even a version of Ferb, Candace and me that pretty much have to invent or they get nausea and headaches and all that nasty stuff." He changed the subject before Phineas could determine whether his counterpart had really said Candace's name there – no, he had to have misheard that. Phineas still regretted that his sister had never joined in with him and Ferb on their adventures, but the thought that she'd ever want to build the way he and Ferb had was absurd. That said, if it was something she had to do to survive…

"But are you saying you can't imagine that you could ever have fallen in love with Candace, then?" Other Phineas replied, and Phineas forced himself to focus on that question – a question which was embarrassingly easy to answer. He sighed.

"I'd like to say that, yes, but given the fact that I just lay awake for two hours mulling over my sister's absence, I can't keep that up." Phineas shook his head. "I suppose I can see how you, or, well, me, when I was younger, could have developed feelings for Candace. But I don't think it's for me. I'm happy with Isabella, and I don't want to do anything to jeopardize that."

"Fair enough" Other Phineas said, shrugging. "I think my Candace was really hoping that you would reconsider on that – sorry about that, by the way. I know she can come across as a bit… intense, sometimes, and I don't suppose you'd be unused to that from your own sister. For some reason, she felt like she could only justify her choice for me by proving that every version of us that hadn't gone down that road was unhappy."

"Yeah, I got that impression from her too" Phineas replied. "It's okay. I mean, it's Candace, right? She's always going to be insecure about stuff. I'm just glad that I was able to do something to help her, as little as it was. I mean, you ended up doing most of the work."

"Well, I did have the mind transmitter ready, and Candace is my partner in life" Other Phineas said. "And you giving her a place to stay and building that receiver was probably invaluable for switching our sisters back safely." He cleared his throat. "Well, I can't stay for much longer, given how weak interdimensional space-time is, and you're probably wondering how long it'll take before your own Candace is back, right?" Phineas nodded. "Given that it's Thursday now… well, Friday, technically… and space-time is damaged enough that it'll need some good time to repair itself before we can safely blast through it again. I would estimate that it would take us at least until Monday, possibly Tuesday. So just under a week, like last time." He gave Phineas a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry it has to be this way."

Phineas shook his head. "I understand. My real problem is what I'm going to tell Jeremy and their kids about why Candace still hasn't returned." He sighed, and blinked as he saw his counterpart beginning to fade and flicker. "Wait! Is there anything I can do from here to help? Even just with my sister?"

Other Phineas contemplated that. "Well, unless you can give me some advice that would allow us to get her out of that shell she seems determined to hide herself in, I don't know if there's anything you can do." Phineas shook his head, and he figured the subject was dismissed until his counterpart suddenly continued. "But we've only got a couple of days here, while you two… well, you're going to be brother and sister for the rest of your lives. So maybe you should have regular conversations with her and really try to figure out what she's so insecure about. I mean, that's what I try to do for my sister, and I think it helps. She… Candace… well, she's not your wife. I know that. But I think that for both of us, she's still kind of our responsibility. So if there's anything you can do to help her out, I'd recommend that you go as far and as deep as you need to go. To make Candace feel better, and to make her smile again." There was an odd look of complete content on his face. "I suppose it won't be quite the same for you, but for me, nothing is better than to see Candace smiling when she's finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel."

Phineas blinked. That hadn't at all been the response that he expected to get, and yet he couldn't think of anything to say against it. "Um," he replied, "okay? I guess?"

Other Phineas grinned. "Great." He flickered again. "Well, I guess we should really end this conversation now. This is getting weird. I wonder if this is how Seven feels?"

"Wait – Seven?" It took Phineas only a moment to reach the obvious conclusion. "As in Candace number Seven? There are seven of them? And why would she-"

"Long story, I'll leave that to your sister" Other Phineas replied. "Bye!"

Phineas opened his mouth to say something in return, to object, to complain, to help…

…but his counterpart was gone. And the next moment, he opened his eyes to see that he had returned to his own bedroom. Isabella was still next to him and shifted her body, probably reacting to the fact that he'd woken up. Almost without thinking, he patted her back and wrapped his arm around her a little tighter to calm her down. As he felt her become more and more relaxed, his thoughts drifted off again. To the fact that Candace was safe – for a relative value of safe – in another dimension. To the question of how to dodge the truth around Jeremy and Isabella and whether he should even continue to do so (he had no problems telling Jeremy the truth, really, but he knew Candace would and that she hadn't told him anything so far, which was probably because she was afraid that the fact that another version of her had ended up with her brother would somehow come up sooner or later and that it might affect Jeremy's view of her). And, of course, there was what Other Phineas had advised him at the end.

Part of Phineas wanted to object to that advice. His counterpart was being intrusive, and he was meddling with things that weren't his business. Another part of him felt uncomfortable about doing things so obviously intimate with Candace. Other Phineas had been reciting from his own experience, an experience that involved a romantic relationship with their sister. And those ideas about going back to Candace, perhaps day after day after day, and hugging her until she finally smiled again… those sounded anything but platonic. And certainly not the kind of thing that a happily married man should be doing with his sister.

But Candace… Candace was someone he cared for. Deeply. And no matter how estranged they would get, and no matter how opposed she was to any sort of relationship between them (and even if Phineas knew he loved Isabella, the fact that he remembered his sister's objection to a romantic relationship between them before he remembered his own was a bit disturbing) he knew he wanted to do anything to help her out.

And if engaging in unusually close regular therapy sessions was what it would take, then Phineas knew that was a price he was more than ready to pay.

Because Phineas Flynn would always do anything for his sister.

Another world, another place, identical concerns.

For Phineas Six, it had been a relatively normal day down at his job at The Works. He'd coined a few new ideas to the management, and he had taken the office shuttle for a brief trip to one of Coruscant's moons to discuss how cargo traffic between the two could be optimized both in speed and product quality. He had come home with a sizeable revenue, and his boss had quipped once more that he might just as well take over running the company himself given how much work he'd put into it, which Phineas had once more politely declined.

Sure, he knew he had managed to turn the old industrial district which had been dilapidated even under the later decades of the Republic back into a booming business, but he had no desire to attach himself to it permanently in such a way. It would mean spending less time with Candace and the kids, not being able to take a day off to visit Ferb at the Temple anywhere as easily, and above all, if his help was needed for a mission anywhere in the galaxy he wanted to be ready for it. The Empire might have been defeated, probably for good (even if Phineas knew some people would disagree with him on that), but there were still spice smugglers and slave traders out there. And just as he'd felt when he discovered the Empire was building a Death Star all those years ago, Phineas Flynn could not let injustice persist without doing something about it.

He had come home in the evening, spending some time playing a game with the kids before heading to bed. All in all, it had been a good day, and he was happy. But as he woke up in the middle of the night for a bathroom break and returned, something struck him that would change his mood drastically.

Candace was gone.

He blinked, trying to clarify whether or not he was just imagining things, but his wife's side of the bed remained stubbornly empty. How could that have happened? She was here just now, wasn't she? There before he'd gone to the bathroom, and gone just two minutes later…

And then he realized that maybe he hadn't actually seen her in bed with him that night at all. He'd assumed it at first because it was her natural place to be, but now that he browsed his memory, he couldn't remember going to bed with her that night. Not that that was especially unusual – she occasionally stayed up a little bit longer than he did anyway – but Phineas couldn't remember anything about seeing her this evening. Or in the morning, for that matter.

It was entirely possible that he hadn't seen Candace at all today. How could that be? She was his wife ! How was it even conceivable that she could go missing just like that, and it was impossible for him to tell whether he had seen her for the last twenty-four hours at all? His mind briefly tracked back all those years to when Isabella Garcia-Shapiro had called him flighty and oblivious, but that was a long time ago, in an entirely different place than where he was now. And he wasn't so oblivious – he knew he wasn't generally so oblivious – that he wouldn't remember when his partner had disappeared.

Phineas shook his head. There was no reason at all to panic. Sure, the bed felt cold to the touch, and he couldn't recall having seen Candace around for hours. But the blaster she regularly carried with her was nowhere to be found, which made kidnapping unlikely because in nine out of ten kidnapping scenarios, his wife would have pulled out her blaster and either thwarted her attacker or been taken down, possibly leaving the empty blaster to fall on the ground. But there was no blaster, and no sign of a skirmish. And if Candace had been sleeping so deeply that she hadn't fought her assailants at all, they would still have disarmed her and probably thrown the weapon away. Either way, kidnapping was unlikely. The fact that both of their other weapons were still in their places in their respective cabinets also provided evidence for that.

Maybe Candace had simply stayed with the kids all night for whatever reason? That was entirely possible, after all – they had four kids, and you never knew when one of them might catch a cold or experience anxieties or have something else that required constant attention. It was a far more obvious solution than kidnapping, come to think of it, and Phineas chuckled to himself as he walked over to the children's quarters.

But a cursory glance into Luke and Andrea's room revealed that Candace wasn't there. And she wasn't with Tyrria and Anakin either – although the latter did wake up when he opened the door. The boy rubbed his eyes and looked over at him. "Daddy?" he murmured. "Where's… where's Mommy?"

If even their youngest child had noticed Candace's absence and Phineas hadn't, then he was really failing as a husband right now. "I'm sure she's fine, kiddo" he replied softly. It was the best thing he could say without lying outright. "Don't worry about it, okay?"

He closed the door and walked back up to his own bedroom. This time, he didn't head for the bed but straight for the window, which looked out on the Jedi Temple. Their apartment was fairly high up, and the balcony was generally closed off during the night with the windows locked – after all, you never knew when Imperials or bounty hunters could come after you because they'd figured out that you were acquaintances of some of the people that ran the galaxy. And, puzzlingly enough, every security measure was still in place. Theoretically, no one should have been able to enter the room.

Maybe it had been a Force sensitive? The Sith might have been destroyed, but that didn't mean there weren't still Dark Side users around. Phineas supposed that it was entirely possible that one of them could have simply knocked on his door, mind-tricked Candace into coming along and him into forgetting most of what had happened, and left again without needing to leave any physical evidence of his or her stay. The problem with that theory was that Phineas knew neither he nor Candace was likely to be deemed so important that a powerful Dark Force sensitive would sneak into the heart of Coruscant to kidnap either of them. It might not have been the permanent capital anymore, but it was still a Core World that was firmly under control of the New Republic.

It was a mystery, that was for sure, and every minute he just stood here he was getting antsier. He walked back into the main room of their apartment and fetched the tracker he had invented to be able to find people easily in the same way his brother did. Candace had been the first to have her genetic signature inserted into the database, so it should be easy to track her down…

But it wasn't. Because as impossible as that might be, she simply wasn't there.

A cold fear settled in his heart. Candace couldn't be… she wasn't… no. He utterly refused to believe that. His wife was brilliant, strong, resilient… she had to be fine. He… he needed her to be fine.

His parents' death had traumatized Phineas Flynn for weeks. It had been years ago, all the way before even Luke – their Luke – was born, and he still agonized over it now. He wouldn't lose Candace, because he simply couldn't lose her.

But confirming that she was still alive meant that he needed access to the Force in a broader way than his tracker could give him, and as always, that meant contacting Ferb.

Phineas felt his hands tremble as he walked back up to his bedroom once more and sat down, closing his eyes to meditate. Since his midichlorian count was well below what would be required for him to be officially judged to be 'Force sensitive', he had never been able to reach out to other people. But Ferb could use the Force, and he had honed his skills in reaching out to others so much that he could even access the minds of non-sensitives. All Phineas had to do was shutting himself out from the outside world, and then Ferb would eventually notice and reach out to him. It was a tenuous process, but it was necessary, because Phineas knew that Ferb would be in the middle of a meditation session of his own right about now and therefore wouldn't have his comlink on him. Which was probably for the best, as Phineas didn't trust himself to operate a comlink right now.

It took him up to two minutes before he had managed to shut himself off from the world well enough to know that Ferb should be reaching out to him any second now, and sure enough, he felt a tingling at his mind a moment later, followed by Ferb's mental voice. Phineas?

Ferb , Phineas acknowledged him, feeling unable to give him anymore than a short courtesy. I need your help. Candace is gone, and I just activated my tracker and I can't see her on it anymore. It's like… it's like she's not even there , Ferb. Even in his mind, he felt his voice trembling.

What happened? Ferb communicated back.

I – I don't know! I left to go to the bathroom, and when I came back she wasn't there – and what was more, I couldn't even remember her having been here all day! Her blasters were all still in place, with the exception of the one that she always has on her, which makes kidnapping unlikely but she's still gone and she's not showing up on my tracker and, and…

Calm down, Phineas, Ferb replied. There is no sign of a death in the Force pertaining to our family. I am sure that wherever she is, she's alive.

That failed to reassure Phineas as much as it probably should have. Can you ask Luke Skywalker to check? he sent. I mean, he is the Grand Master, and he's stronger in the Force than you are.

There was a pause at the other end. I don't know , Ferb replied. Luke has been meditating all night with the Council in regard to a great disturbance in the Force that took place sometime last night. He has given orders to everyone in the Temple that he does not want to be interrupted unless it is an emergency, and I don't know whether he would agree that this incident qualifies.

Incident? Phineas repeated, stunned. This is no kriffing incident , Ferb! This is my wife we're talking about, and she could be – she could be dead right now! A fresh wave of terror shot through his heart. You need to contact Luke, right away!

Don't worry, Phineas , Ferb replied. You are right. I shall try to seek contact with him as soon as we end the conversation. I am sure Ben Solo will be able to sneak me into the Council chambers so that I can meet with his uncle.

Phineas nodded unthinkingly. Thanks, Ferb. Sorry for yelling at you.

I'm sorry that this had to happen – whatever it is, Ferb thought back. May the Force be with you.

Phineas' face was contorted in something between a smile and a grimace. May the Force be with you, too.

The connection ended, but Phineas kept his eyes shut for a while longer. Sitting here with closed eyes kept him from accessing the outside world and the harsh truth that Candace was gone.

Gone, to never come back?

No. He couldn't think that way, and he wouldn't think that way. Ferb had said that there was no sign of her being dead, and that meant that she was still alive. He just needed to harness some of his usual optimism, because everything was going to be fine.

They would track down Candace. They would find her. They would swoop in, and they would save her. In all that, it didn't matter whether she'd been taken by a bounty hunter, by a regular Dark Side user, or even by the Emperor himself coming back to haunt them. Phineas and Ferb would take them on, and they would win, and his wife would be safe again. He knew it, and he hoped that wherever Candace was out there in the galaxy she knew it too.

Because Phineas Flynn would always do anything for his wife.

Another world, another place… but no concerns.

For Phineas Seven, the disappearance of his sister would have undoubtedly been a cause for concern. He would have gone to Jeremy, his Candace's husband, as soon as he had been called. Jeremy Johnson would have undoubtedly missed Candace, and so would their children – teenaged Amanda, and pre-teens Xavier and Fred. They all cared about their mother, and Phineas and Ferb cared about Candace as well despite all the times she could still be rude against them for no reason at all. They were a happy family, and one that would have done everything to get their Candace Flynn-Johnson back.

But Phineas Seven no longer existed. His whole timeline no longer existed, being erased from existence when – only one year ago, or nineteen years in the future, depending on how you looked at it – Candace Seven had taken the opportunity of her brothers showing up from the past to go back in time and change it.

She had set out to change the past – but not because she had missed out on the husband she had so desperately craved, or the children and the happy life that she had hoped for to make it all worthwhile whenever life turned against her in her childhood. She had all of those things already. She hadn't gone back for a happy family either, because she had her younger siblings and parents, and they all loved her.

No, Candace Seven had gone back in time to bust her brothers.

She had failed – she hadn't even had a chance to try, technically, considering that a slightly older version of herself came back in time from a dystopian future to stop her. But what little she'd done had been enough to change things, so that a new future was created in which Candace Flynn had ended up in a relationship with her own brother instead. And original Candace Seven had been erased from the time stream along with everything she held dear, with only the fact that she had been the cause of the change shielding her from total erasure. Instead, she'd become an anomaly – someone who shouldn't exist, and who no longer belonged.

But even if Candace Seven's actions had brought an end to her own family, she could have still had a new one. She had approached the Phineas of the new world – Phineas Three – and although he had been unable to help her get back to the timeline she was from, he had offered her a place to stay nonetheless. But Candace resented him. She resented him for his perfect life, and she resented him for the fact that he'd repaired the time machine and given her the chance to go back in time and mess up her future in the first place.

So Candace had turned Phineas down, and she had walked out of his and Ferb's lives altogether. Within a few weeks, she had managed to set up a new existence, until an accident with a Do-Over-Inator twenty years earlier erased even that new life into nothingness. Candace Seven had seen herself forced to settle into a different place again and had made a new home for herself twenty years in the past, being careful to stay as far away from her brothers as possible.

She didn't want them.

She didn't need them.

And thus when Candace Seven disappeared, it was only her boss at her work who would raise an eyebrow at her absence, and only her landlord who would be irritated that her apartment was no longer being lived in and he was unlikely to collect any further rent for it. But new employees could be found, and if Candace Seven remained absent for long enough someone new would move into her apartment too, and all the things she had acquired in her new life (which wasn't much) would be unceremoniously put up for auction.

Candace Seven's absence was noted by a select few. But she wasn't missed. She wasn't missed because of things that had happened to her, but most of all she wasn't missed because of her own choices, her own choice to risk everything for a chance to bust her brothers, something which she would know to have a profound impact on her younger self's life. And because after that, she had chosen herself to cut all ties with the new family she could have had.

Candace's life was gone. Her husband and children were gone, and her own siblings were gone. And without them, there would be no one who panicked over what could have happened to her, and there would be no one who would set out to get her back. Dimension number Four, no matter how revolting a place Candace Seven might deem it to be, had now become the only hope she had left.

Because Phineas Flynn could no longer do anything for his sister.

Another world, another place, identical concerns.

For Petra Flynn, the day had been entirely ordinary – far more ordinary than the days he had been used to in his youth. Then, he and Fern built rockets that almost went into outer space, and even a rollercoaster that went through much of Danville. But those days were long since over, and by now he worked at a construction company. It was an occasionally boring nine-to-five job, but it paid well and the people were friendly, and when he went to bed that day it was therefore with a feeling of satisfaction and happiness in life.

Until the phone call came.

Petra took the phone off his nightstand and saw the 'Kevin and Wilma' on screen, which only confused him more. What in the world would they be calling him in the middle of the night for? Had the municipal council collapsed somehow? Was there another political emergency for which Kevin required moral support from her family? Or was it something more personal? Oh well. He'd find out what it was soon enough. "Hello?"

"Hello, Petra" Wilma's voice replied. "I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour, but have you seen Kevin?"

Petra blinked. That was a very unusual question, especially given the fact that it was Kevin's own husband who was the one asking it. "No, I haven't. Not in a couple of days now. Is something wrong?"

Wilma mumbled something under his breath. "You might say that" he replied. "I woke up just a couple of minutes ago for a bathroom break and noticed that Kevin was gone and that her bed hadn't even been occupied. That was strange enough in itself, but then I realized that I couldn't remember seeing her all day. I presumed that it was something related to her work, that she must have gone off to City Hall and told me about it and I just couldn't remember what it was for, but then a call from her deputy came in telling me that Kevin had been absent from there about as long as she'd been absent from here . She just… vanished, at some point, and we have no idea where she went."

Kevin's brother blinked, barely able to cope with the barrage of words his brother-in-law had just unleashed at him. "Okay, calm down" he replied. "We have to think this through logically. Have you looked at her diary to see whether she had any appointments out of town?"

"Yes, I have" Wilma said. "But there wasn't anything there, and in any case I would expect her office to know even if I didn't. Kevin may be a little bit of a loner at times who just follows her own course without informing the city council, but I can't imagine she'd just up and depart for so long. Especially with the major debate coming up about the pool legislation." He paused for a moment. "You… you don't think Hirano could be behind this, do you? I know Kevin has a bit of a paranoia complex about her sometimes, but that woman has dedicated most of her life to fighting her."

"What, you think Stanley Hirano made Kevin disappear?" Petra asked. "I… I don't think that's particularly plausible, Wilma. I won't disagree that she can be a bit of a hassle to get along with sometimes, and she made some cutting remarks against Kevin during the election campaign, but I doubt she'd stoop as low as to make Kevin disappear, particularly as any hint of her involvement could ruin her own political career, in so far as she still has one. I mean, back in the day when Fern and I would build all those things in our backyard Isaac and her Fireside Girls would come over a lot, and Stanley's younger sister Greg was one of them. And Greg always looked like she was a nice person, even though of course she remained at some distance from Kevin, and it looked like Stanley genuinely cared about her." He cleared his throat. "My point being, Stanley Hirano isn't quitethe monster Kevin sometimes makes her out to be."

Wilma sighed. "Maybe. But even if she isn't, Kevin is still gone, and I can't do anything to help her. Is there any way that you or Fern could make some kind of invention that would be able to track her down?"

Petra blinked. "We're not magicians, Wilma. Sure, we tinkered a lot back in the day, but that sounds a little out of our league. I suppose we could always give it a shot, but I can't guarantee anything. Did you call Fern yet?"

"I sent him a text message, and he just replied that he hasn't seen Kevin all day either" Wilma said. "I… I would have called the police in an instant, in as far as Kevin's office workers haven't already done that, but I don't know whether they'll be able to do anything – like Kevin always says, the police department in Danville is dramatically understaffed and undersupplied and there's nothing they can do about it now that the economy is so tight. All they really have are a handful of agents, two police cars, and a big fat ox."

"A big fat ox?" Petra repeated.

"Yeah – he's the guy from the communications department" Wilma explained. "They should have fired him years ago, but he's got a solid contract. It exemplifies everything that's wrong in the bureaucracy quite well, actually."

"I'm sure it's not quite as bad as all that, Wilma" Petra said, trying to be reassuring. "We'll find her, or they will, I have no doubt of that. I can even call them if you don't feel up to it. Do you want Fern and me to come over?"

There was a long silence at the other end. "Yes, probably" Wilma finally replied. "I guess I'll need it. I'm going to make myself sick with worry if I just stay here all by myself. But of course, you don't have to feel compelled to come over for my sake. That goes doubly for Fern, for obvious reasons."

"Don't worry, we're fine" Petra replied. "Or at least, I am. I know I didn't have any other plans for tonight anyway." Wilma chuckled, and Petra was relieved that at least his sister's husband was doing well enough to be able to deal with a joke like that. "I'll be on my way as soon as possible."

"Thank you" Wilma replied, cutting off the connection. Petra sighed and walked over to his closet. He supposed that he would just be putting his pajamas back on when he got to Wilma and Kevin's house, but in the meantime he really needed some clothes. Not just because it would be awkward to walk into his brother-in-law's home in night clothes, but also because it was fairly cold outside and he still had a mile or so to drive ahead of him.

What could have happened to Kevin? It was a thought that had been bouncing around Petra's mind ever since he'd heard about her disappearance, and aside from debunking Wilma's arguments he hadn't been able to come up with anything. He supposed that an involuntary departure was likely if no one knew anything about it, which did point to a political opponent, but Petra had never thought his sister's job was so important that someone would actually go out there and do something so cliche.

And then, of course, there was the more relevant question of what they could do about it. Petra supposed that he could try something like what Wilma had suggested. Maybe there were some possibilities using… body warmth scanners, but attuned specifically to his sister? And although tracking her through a satellite was probably a bit too much to ask as long as they didn't have access to said satellites, it was entirely possible for them to build some kind of vehicle that would be able to transport them around the world at a fast pace so they could look for Kevin themselves.

Of course, all of that would take days. And it would take a lot of back-breaking labor, and work of the kind that neither Petra nor Fern had done in a long while and which was extremely conducive to accidents, particularly if it had to be done at a rapid pace.

But if it would prove to be the only way to save Kevin, Petra already knew that all those objections would be irrelevant, and he'd do it, plain and simple.

Because Petra Flynn would always do anything for his sister.

Another world, another place, identical concerns.

For Phineas Four, communicating with another version of himself through mind connection had certainly been… unusual. Then again, how was it any more unusual than any of the other things that had happened over the course of the day? Like last year, he was down in his lab at Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, trying to bring Candace from another dimension home. But this time Ferb was with him – and this time, the task was entirely different from the one he had to accomplish last time. Because whereas last time, his Candace's body was still in this dimension and he had to switch the two of them without causing permanent damage to either vessel, this time all Candaces were in their own bodies and unlikely to be hurt in the process.

Yes, all Candaces. Because over the past day, Phineas Flynn had gotten acquainted with seven versions of his sister, one even more interesting than the next.

There was Candace One, who was still just a teenager bent on busting her world's version of him and Ferb. Then there was Candace Two, the older version of the awesome Candace from the second dimension who had apparently grown a little overprotective over the years. Candace Three was the inventing one, Candace Five was the one married to Jeremy that he'd met before, Candace Six was the one from outer space, Candace Seven was the troubled one who had turned out to be a temporal anomaly replaced by Three, and then there was Kevin, who was mayor of Danville. It was a motley bunch, that was for sure.

They were all fascinating people in their own way, but after spending a large part of the day with her and seeing up close just what she could do Phineas had to say that Three was the one who had left the biggest impression on him. A version of his sister who could achieve the impossible the way he and Ferb could? Who could do impossible calculations at a moment's notice – which was especially impressive as math had always been a topic his sister had struggled with, to the point where he'd had to help her with it almost constantly during her last year of high school. Three was still a version of Candace, but she was a Candace he could talk to about equations without her zoning off the way he figured most other Candaces would – even including his own sister.

It really was pretty cool to meet a version of Candace who was capable of all those things, the things that only he and Ferb could really do in this dimension. He remembered the time back at the start of their relationship when he'd tried to teach his own sister to invent – and how close she'd come – only to realize that it was just always going to be a lot tougher for her than it was for him and Ferb, and that that was okay, because although she admired and respected what he did she wasn't particularly interested in inventing anyway. Which was a bit of a disappointment, because it would have been cool to have another terrain on which they could bond, but it just wasn't who she was, and he loved Candace too much to ever want her to change like that. They had enough common interests as it was – he didn't want her to become a clone of himself. (Not that Three was a clone of her own Phineas, of course… well, he supposed that she wasn't. He didn't know Other Phineas. Hopefully that could be remedied in time.)

Phineas briefly wondered what Candace had thought at seeing the woman who had actually become her brothers' partner in inventing. Probably that the whole withdrawal thing proved she'd ended up on the right path. Phineas had to admit that that idea made him a little queasy, too. Of course he knew well enough how frustrating it was not to be able to invent when you wanted to, and in the cases where he had actually drawn up plans for an invention only for someone or something else to keep him from it, his brain had been pretty close to getting into lockdown. He had managed to cope with it over the years, but even now it was very difficult in those situations to keep his focus on whatever new thing had kept him from inventing, and he would sometimes be bouncing on his feet until he could get back to the plans he'd originally been working on. It was kind of embarrassing, actually, and Candace had tried to help him get over it – at least in public, but given that they had another incident a couple of months ago he clearly wasn't fully done with it. That was part of why he'd wondered if he and Ferb might well suffer from the same problems but within a different time frame, but Candace Three had told him in no uncertain terms that their situation was entirely different. Which was fair enough – he supposed that she would know best, and he knew he'd never gotten close to the physical symptoms she had described. He hoped Other Phineas, Ferb and Candace weren't tormented by it too badly.

Ferb gave him a look, and Phineas shrugged, snapping out of the trail of his thoughts. "Sorry, bro – I just got lost in thought there. I mean, it has been a pretty crazy day." He grinned. "But the machine works! I made perfect contact this time! Thank you so much – I really couldn't have done it without you." He waved his hand around the laboratory. "Thanks for everything, really. I know you and Isabella had planned to go on that family picnic today."

"Candace is my sister too, you know," Ferb replied. "There is no need to thank me."

Phineas nodded. "I know, I know. And I don't want to denigrate your bond. But Candace is… well, you know how special she is to me. And even if all these other versions of her aren't her, per se, and they have their own brothers – or others – to go home to, it's still feels like my responsibility. Did you hear that rhyme?" Ferb rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know, it wasn't too inspired. Let's wrap up the work on this and go home. It really is getting pretty late now."

They worked on the blueprints for Phineas' idea of a dimension-travelling vehicle in silence for the next ten minutes, with him being determined to make at least some coherent and useful progress before he turned in for the night. That useful progress turned out to be the plans for the design of the vehicle, along with the calculations of how big it would be before the rip it would need to breach into space-time would be untenable. Ferb made some calculations about how to maximize his usual British sci-fi technology to make the vehicle bigger on the inside, and it all seemed like it would work out. Phineas put his blueprints away and was just about to ask Ferb whether he could get a ride home from him when an unusual chill struck his spine.

He knew he couldn't explain it. He had never been able to explain this. But for some reason, he suddenly knew that something was wrong. He'd always been reluctant about calling it a sixth sense, and Candace often suffered from the same thing with regards to him, so…

Candace.

It was about Candace .

Phineas turned to Ferb, wishing he was able to say anything coherent. As it was, all he could do was stammer "She's in trouble!" before making a mad dash towards the stairs. He didn't even know how he knew where to go, he just… did.

As he stormed up the flights towards the top of the building, he could begin to make out his sister's voice. Crying for help – it was probably a nightmare, and he knew how deeply those tended to traumatize her. She needed him, her brother and her lover, and he had to be there. He had to be there, in her cubicle, because…

Hang on. Cubicle? Candace was at home, with the kids – he'd seen her leave. Phineas came to a halt just after entering through the door to the ninth floor. Candace wasn't here – it had to be one of her other selves. Which meant that she wasn't calling for his help – she was calling for the help of another Phineas. Him being there would only make it more awkward, particularly if it was Six or Three, who were in relationships with their brothers – notably, their own brothers. And if he couldn't be of any help anyway, not for something as intimate as comforting a version of his sister through a nightmare, maybe he'd better check that there was no outside threat and then go back down the…

" Phineas… "

That soft whimper went to the core of his soul, even if he knew he wasn't the one the other Candace was addressing. And just like that, he changed his mind completely.

Awkwardness was irrelevant. The amount of help he would be able to provide would sort itself out. The empty box lying in front of the cubicle's door which caused him to stumble and almost fall to the ground wasn't even worth thinking about.

A version of Candace was in trouble, and Phineas knew he was the only one who could help her. And that was more than enough reason for him to rush over to the door of Other Candace's cubicle and pull it open.

Because Phineas Flynn would always do anything for his sister.


	20. The Needs of the Many and the Few

Candace is cold.

So very, very cold. She shivers and rubs her arms, trying to warm up, but to no avail. Her breath hangs in the air like a frosty cloud of steam, the sound of her own exhaling the only thing that breaks the silence of the room. It's a small room.

Very small.

The floors and the walls and ceiling are made of wooden panels. There are no windows, no doors, no hatches. Just solid wood wherever she looks. It is as if the room had been built up around her.

"Hello?" she calls.

Even though there's no light, it isn't dark. She can see perfectly - every last detail of the wood grain on the panels that block her in on every side.

"Phineas? Ferb?"

A cold feeling settles in her chest as she utters those names - one even colder than the chill surroundings of the exit-less room. Where are they? They aren't here. They aren't - they aren't anywhere . She doesn't know how she knows this. Phineas and Ferb are almost omnipresent. If she gets into trouble, they'll be there. Yet… somehow she knows that this time, that won't be the case.

"You're all alone," a voice comes. A shaky, tremulous voice - one that seems uncertain of itself, that wildly varies in pitch - and yet is filled with more seething vitriol than Candace had ever heard herself use. A voice that strikes an unholy terror into her heart. There is no feeling in that voice. No conscience, and no remorse.

She whirls around, coming face to face with… herself. But it isn't herself, at the same time. It looks like it may have been her at one time, but not anymore. It's a Candace, all right, a Candace that somehow towers over her, a Candace wearing clothes torn to shreds and splattered all over with dried blood stains, a Candace who smiles a terrible smile, revealing teeth yellowed from decay, a Candace whose eyes flash with unspeakable horrors that almost glow in the darkness.

Candace's eyes widen, and she tries to respond, but her mouth refuses to open. Her feet feel as if they're glued onto the floor.

The other Candace laughs mirthlessly at her. "You're pathetic." Her eyes shift wildly about, and she licks her lips as if in anticipation. "There's no one here for you now . No flying saucers. No time-traveling versions of yourself. No Phineas and Ferb. And you know what that means?" The other Candace gestures about wildly with a long, silvery gun-looking device that is suddenly in her hands, smiling a horribly twisted smile that shakes Candace down to her very core. "I'm going to finish what I started."

Candace wants to turn - to run. But she can't. Can't move, can't speak, can't breathe. It feels as if she's been turned to stone. Her arms feel heavy, and though she tries to raise them anyway - to do something, anything, to defend herself, she simply isn't able to.

No! She wants to shout. Phineas! Help - please! Phineas !

There's no one. She doesn't know how she knows. But there's simply no one at all. And there's nothing she can do about it. She's Candace Gertrude Flynn, the fifteen-year-old that everyone mocks as delusional, who can't do anything right to save her life, who depends on her little brothers to pluck her out of the jaws of death.

But they aren't here. She's alone. All alone, for now and forever. Wherever her brothers are… they're gone. And somehow she knows they're never coming back.

The older Candace pulls the trigger on the spacetime ripper, and it's as if Candace can see the white beam of particles moving through the air towards her in slow motion.

She tries to scream.

"... PHINEAS !"

With a sudden jolt, she shot forward into an upright position on the bed, drenched in cold sweat, her breaths coming in short and ragged bursts, her heart beating like it was going to explode out of her chest at any moment now.

She reached up to wipe the sweat away from her face, but her hands were trembling so badly that it was all but impossible. She hugged herself tightly and rocked back and forth on the bed, trying to breathe, to do anything - to get rid of the horrifying images still lurking in her mind. The pitch blackness around her seemed to be closing in from all directions, suffocating the life out of her.

"Phineas," she repeated, more weakly this time, as the adrenaline slowly drained out of her system. She felt almost like she wanted to cry. This wasn't the first time this had happened, but it had been a very, very, very long time since anything remotely as intense and real and terrifying . There was no one in the bed next to her, and for a moment, a bolt of terror flashed through her as she realized that.

There was a small scuffle outside the door, and it suddenly banged open, letting light stream into the dark room. Even as it did so, the light from the hall spilled into the small office, dispelling any last trace of illusion that she was home.

"Candace Three?" Other Phineas was in the doorway, looking slightly red and out of breath, as if he'd just run from somewhere. "Are you okay?"

No, no she wasn't okay. Not in the slightest. She shivered, hugging herself even tighter. She wanted Phineas - her Phineas. She wanted him right here, right now. But he couldn't be here, and Other Phineas was expecting an answer. Which was a frightening concept in and of itself.

"I - I -" she stammered. "F-f-ine. I'm - I'm fine." She tried to suck in a deep breath, but her heart was still beating far too rapidly for that.

"What happened?" Other Phineas' voice was tinged with concern. "You're - you're awfully pale."

Her entire being was crying out for her Phineas - her brother, her lover, her… life preserver in so many other situations such as this one. But, no… she'd have to handle it herself, this time. Because this time, Phineas was not here. Nor could he be. "I - I - said I'm f - fine." Why, oh why, couldn't they have gotten trapped in her dimension rather than Four's?

Other Phineas stepped over and set his surprisingly warm hand on her bare shoulder. "Candace… do you realize how pale you are - how clammy your skin is? And you woke up at midnight screaming. I can tell that you're not fine."

"You wouldn't want to hear," Candace mumbled. "It's embarrassing."

Other Phineas paused for a moment and sat down on the end of the mattress. "Candace, I... realize that you'd probably rather I was your - your brother. I… get that." He smiled a small smile. "Interdimensional travel is a pain like that sometimes. But, I mean, I've been living with my Candace for twenty-one years now. I can tell when something's a problem." He hesitated momentarily. "Although given you did wake up screaming my name, it doesn't take much to figure that out anyway."

"I - I guess not."

"And I do realize that I won't be able to replace your brother. I wouldn't even try," Other Phineas resumed. "But there's something the matter. I'm here. I can help - or at least try , if you'll let me."

For a moment, Candace was torn. She didn't want to negatively affect what Other Phineas thought of her by telling him this. He wouldn't be able to do half the things that Phineas did anyway. He wasn't even Phineas - he was Other Phineas, someone who, for all intents and purposes, was a different person entirely.

Then, the words she'd heard spoken in her dream came back to her, and she contemplated the idea of being left alone in the darkness again, and her mind was made up in an instant. No, Other Phineas wasn't her brother. No, he wouldn't be able to do half the things that her brother did, nor would he know how often she'd struggled with this in the past or anything of that sort. But she couldn't be left alone again right now. She needed to talk to someone, and he'd just have to do.

"I…" she began, shivering again as she did so. "I had the nightmare again."

Other Phineas frowned slightly. " The nightmare?"

"Yes - I…" she stopped and sighed. "I know it sounds ridiculous. I'm a grown woman, for crying out loud. I know that. But I - I swear it's actually terrifying."

"That's alright," he replied gently. "I believe you." He paused for a second. "Do you want to talk about it?"

No , Candace felt like saying, I want my brother here to hold me because this has happened before and he knows how terrifying it is and I just don't want to be alone anymore.

Okay, so given Other Phineas' presence in the room, she wasn't exactly 'alone'. But it felt like she may as well have been. Her heart was still beating hard and fast in her chest, only slowing down a little over the course of the minute or so since she'd so abruptly awoken.

"It happened a long time ago," she finally began, her voice barely above a whisper. Other Phineas shifted slightly and leaned inwards so as to hear her better. "All that stuff I told - I told you this afternoon? It was all true." She nodded subconsciously. "But I, well, left out one part."

She drew her knees up close to her chest and hugged herself tightly as she continued, trying to fool herself into thinking that the warmth was her brother's and not just her own recycled body heat. "I told you that I never time-traveled. That's… that's not true. I did. And I... well, I went twenty years into the future - the future in which Phineas and Ferb had never existed."

She stopped for a moment to take a breath and gather up what was left of her willpower from inside her. "And it was terrible. It was… it was last year actually. 2037. I skipped twenty years right up to it, and it was just terrible . Everything was destroyed - abandoned - desolate. The museum was condemned, the park in front the museum was a decrepit graffiti-covered urban wasteland that was falling apart at the seams. But that wasn't the bad part." She shook her head. "The bad part was - you know want to know what happened? Who brought such a horrid future to bear? It was me , Phineas. Me ."

He didn't say anything, instead sitting quietly on the bed, and she couldn't bring herself to look at his face as she continued. "I don't what happened. I don't know how it worked. All I know is that I saw the future - a future in which I was insane and psychopathic and tried to kill me and - and it was so scary , Phineas!" It was all she could do to prevent breaking down in tears. "I was fifteen years old . I was helpless and you and Ferb were gone and if I failed then you'd never be able to come back and she was going to kill me and there was nothing at all I could do about it! And I - I -" she hiccuped slightly, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"Three - Candace," Other Phineas said softly, putting his hand on her shoulder again. "I - I'm sure that was terrifying. But it's okay - you're okay. Whatever happened in the past - be it twenty-one years ago or last year - it's over. And you're alright."

But she only shook her head. "That's not even it really," she choked out. "I know I'm fine. It's - it's the other part. My brothers were gone , Phineas, and I turned into that . I was supposed to rescue them. Instead, I turned into a completely deranged lunatic who saw nothing wrong with massacring a fifteen year old girl with a spacetime ripper and - and her eyes , Phineas." A shudder ran up and down her spine. "It's been twenty-one years and I can still remember them - remember who I was - who I could have been." She sniffled slightly. "It was like being there all over again. I don't know how I knew it, but… that was it. I'd failed - like I always do - and everyone was just… gone. It was just me - me and her . And she was going to kill me."

"Could have," Other Phineas repeated gently. "You yourself said you only went to 2037. That was last year. That time is past, Candace. You could have, maybe, - but you didn't." He hesitated for a second. "We all have the potential to do terrible things. It's not our potentials that define us, though. You know that. And your brother, well, he isn't here right now, but he's out there - somewhere in the spacetime continuum, and he's waiting for you. And I'm here right now - you aren't alone, Candace. It's going to be okay."

"I know!" she tearfully exclaimed. "I know! I'm thirty-six years old now - I shouldn't be waking up in the middle of the night falling apart at the seams, practically in tears , over a nightmare . I'm - I'm so messed up and I thought I was over this. It's been almost ten years since this's happened this badly and - and of course it had to happen when - when Phineas's not here and - and-"

"It's alright," Other Phineas broke in. He put his arm around her as she buried her face in her hands in an attempt to avoid actually breaking down in tears. It didn't quite work, and a few still managed to leak out. She hadn't realized how quivery she still was until she felt how comparatively still he was as he sat next to her. "I don't know the whole story, obviously, but it sounds like you're perfectly justified to me. It sounds, well, it sounds terrifying."

"It is," she murmured.

"I can tell. Look - just because you're no longer a child - that doesn't mean you're going to magically get over things like that. It sounds like it was very traumatic - it's normal to feel that way. Besides, didn't you say that it's been ten years since this has happened?" He paused, and Candace nodded slowly. "So you have been recovering - recovered, even. I'm sure that yesterday just brought some bad memories back and last night you were asleep too deeply to dream. But that still doesn't change the fact of the matter - it's okay ." He took a deep breath. " You're okay. Your brothers are okay. Nothing from even the worst of dreams is going to be able to hurt you."

"Maybe," she sniffled. "It was just - I just want my brother to be here. I know it's only been two days and feel like I'm being so overdramatic but I miss him and apparently my future without him is that of a murderous tyrant so maybe it's for the best anyway."

Other Phineas frowned. "You know that's not how time travel and alternative futures work. I know you know that."

"Yeah," Candace admitted softly. "But I just feel like such a drama queen when I go on about how much I miss him and it's only been two days - I mean, Four - your sister - told me that she was trapped in Five's dimension - and Five's body , no less - for like a week and I - I don't know how she handled that because - well, would you look at me? It's been two days and I'm already a mess." She sighed. "I just… I don't know what's wrong with me sometimes. I should be able to go forty-eight hours without falling all to pieces without my brother. It's ridiculous."

Four claimed that she suffered from the same worries that Candace did, yes, but then she would turn around and say things like that , which, to Candace, seemed to fly absolutely in the face of everything she said.

"Nothing's wrong with you," Other Phineas said. "How do you think I felt while my sister was in Five's dimension? And, you know, knowing that it was me who'd sent her there in the first place? And speaking of Candace, it's not like she never has nightmares - not about the same thing you do, and it was never as… well, as chronic as what you're describing, but she's had some pretty nasty ones." He paused. "I can hardly blame you for the way you reacted. I don't think anyone would. After all, you were, as far as I understand, ripped out of an ordinary day and sent through time and space to end up here. That's a complete different story from, say, going on a trip without your brother."

Candace nodded glumly. "I know." She stopped to sigh. "And I was fine this evening, really, but then the nightmare came back and he - he -" She stumbled over her own words for a second. "Phineas did more than anyone else to help me get over this in the first place. I don't know what it was that triggered it, but, like, I was fine for like five years after it even happened ." She paused, blinking rapidly. "Then… just, like, randomly, I started having nightmares about it." Her words caught in her throat for a moment, and she struggled to remain in control of her voice. "For like three weeks it was every night . And every night the same thing would happen. And he - he'd sit up with me while I just sat and - and cried because it was so scary and they just kept coming back . Every. Single. Freaking. Time. I went to sleep. He was the one who persuaded me to get over myself and go to an actual psychiatric doctor, something that I don't think I would've been able to do without him, and I don't know if I ever would've gotten better without those visits." She could feel herself getting worked up again as the memories of that time unearthed themselves from the back of her brain and rose up to taunt her. Her breaths started getting shallow again, coming more and more rapidly. Just how broken was she? This was supposed to be over - to have been over for almost a decade . Her parents, they… tried to help, really they did. But they just couldn't . Such was the way of time travel.

"You'll be alright," Other Phineas repeated for what had to be thirtieth time. Nevertheless, she clung desperately to his words like her life depended it. "It's over now - there's nothing to be afraid of anymore. Just - just take a deep breath. Can you do that for me?"

She nodded mutely, closing her eyes and tremblingly sucking in a mouthful of air, and letting it out slowly.

A few minutes passed in silence, until she was feeling slightly better - at least enough to continue with the story.

"After - after a while, it gradually started happening less and less, thank - thank goodness. By the time Amanda was born, I was pretty much over it. I stopped going to the doctor eventually, and I can count on one hand the number of nightmares I had after she was born - and the last one was just about ten years ago." She exhaled, long and shaky. "And now, tonight. And Phineas's not here and I just… I don't know."

"Well, it's over now," he said. "You're awake - and you're okay. Nobody's hurt, and nobody could be hurt, of course. It was just a dream."

"I know, I know," she replied quietly, breathing in and out slowly. "And I feel silly for it but… I just really wish that...ugh."

"For what it's worth," Other Phineas said slowly. "And I do know it's not much, but I'm sure he'd be here if it was at all possible. In lieu of him, though, I'm here. I'll do whatever I can."

Candace swallowed. "Thank you," she admitted. "That - it means a lot to me. I just… you're not him, you know? It's just… it's not the same." With a small sigh, she leaned back. "I just… I'd do anything to have him here right now. And the kids, but… you - you know how it is."

Other Phineas nodded seriously. "I know," he replied, a slight smile briefly crossing his features. "But… I mean, that isn't really something I can help? - something I know from experience, I guess." He paused for a long moment. "If it, well, if it would help any, though, I suppose I could try. Pretend, I mean."

"What?" Candace turned to look at him, and noticed that he seemed… nervous? It was only slightly, but in someone like Phineas - or Other Phineas - it really stuck out like a sore thumb, especially when she'd been living with her own brother for - well, for thirty-three years, technically - but with a good sixteen of those thirty-three spent as lovers as well as siblings.

"You know," he clarified. "Like, Ca- my Candace told me that Five's Phineas, well, he let her kiss him while she was there in Five's dimension? So... I thought I'd at least offer. Maybe if you close your eyes it'll work?" He hesitated. "I don't really know."

Candace blinked as it suddenly clicked in her brain. "Are you suggesting - oh." She half-smiled awkwardly. "No… I - I don't think - that's alright," she finally replied. "I - I don't think it would work anyway. No offense, of course, but it would never be the same."

Other Phineas' shoulders visibly relaxed, but he still hesitantly asked "Are - are you sure?"

She shook her head. "I am. It's - it's nice of you to offer, but… I couldn't."

It would never be the same. Other Phineas was no more her Phineas than was Candace Four, really - sure, they were a lot the same, but the parts of them that were different were the only parts that really mattered - even so far to Other Phineas just… smelling differently, even. The competence might still have been there, but the stench of motor oil was faded, replaced with a crisp odor of paper and bookbindings and office space. She never thought that one day she would be missing that smell that was just about omnipresent at home, but right now she was. And there was just no way she could ever just close her eyes and pretend Other Phineas was her brother - she couldn't and she wouldn't do it - not to her brother, not to herself, not to Candace Four, and not to Other Phineas.

Other Phineas took a deep breath. "I'm gonna be honest here," he said. "I was really kinda hoping you would say that. I… yeah."

"Well… thanks for asking? I guess?" Candace wasn't entirely sure how to respond to this. "I mean… I guess it's nice of you, especially if you were uncomfortable with it, but… yeah."

"I just made this really awkward, didn't I?" Other Phineas asked, smiling slightly. "My bad."

"No, it's - it's alright," she assured him. "You just, uh, caught me off guard a little bit." She reached up and patted him on the shoulder. "Thank you, though - not just for that. For… before, too."

Other Phineas nodded. "Of course." He slowly stood up from the mattress, stretching widely. "How do you - are you feeling any better now, though?"

"I…" Candace stopped for a moment and thought. She was able to sit still now - the shivering and sweating had stopped - though she did still feel somewhat sticky. And she could breathe , and her heart wasn't pounding and her thoughts were less muddled and she could tell herself that it was all just a dream - and believe it. "Yeah... I guess I'm alright." She smiled gratefully at Other Phineas. "Seriously, thank you."

"No problem," he replied. "It's - well, I couldn't leave you hanging. You may not be my Candace, but you're a Candace, and that's close enough for me."

She laid back down on the mattress slowly, letting out a long sigh. "That is… good to know."

He grinned. "Well, just you make sure your brother knows what's expected of him should my sister end up trapped there, alright? We'll call that even." He paused for a second. "Say… out of curiosity… earlier you said that you were thirty-six years old?"

Candace propped herself back up on one elbow. "Yeah, I think I said that? Why?"

He frowned for second, deep in thought. "So you were born in 2002?" When she nodded, he continued. "Well, you probably won't believe this, but there's - my Candace was born in 1995."

"Nineteen nine-" Candace blinked in surprise. "Wait, she's - Four is seven years older than me? I - wow. I did not realize that." This was certainly a surprising piece of news. She'd had the assumption that all seven of them and Kevin were the same age - hadn't Four herself said so in the non-dimension? No, come to think of it, Candace'd never asked her how old she was, just the date she'd hailed from.

Other Phineas shrugged. "Yeah, actually, she told me that you guys are kinda all over the place with ages. Apparently Kevin's thirty-eight and Six's thirty-nine. It kinda caught me by surprise, too."

"I mean," Candace pointed out. "Given that One is fifteen, I guess it should've been obvious that we weren't all necessarily the same age. Huh." She frowned. "Weird."

"Well, it's different," he replied. "Though - and this probably doesn't take you by that much surprise - Candace and I are actually four years apart. I'm thirty-nine." He grinned boyishly. "So I guess, in a spatiotemporal sort of way, you might say that I'm your older brother, even though you're somehow still taller than me."

"Oh, get out of here with that." Candace rolled her eyes, but couldn't resist a small smile, before momentarily lapsing back into thoughtfulness. "Wait, you and Four are four years apart - that's interesting. Phineas and I are only three years and like two months apart." She paused as a thought occurred to her. "Wow - you guys did have your kids way later than we did. Because Amanda and Xavier really look just about the same age as… well, your Amanda and Xavier, I guess."

"Really?" Other Phineas leaned against the wall. "How old are your kids?"

"Well, Xavier's ten and Amanda's gonna be turning thirteen in two months," she replied. "Which can't be that far off your kids."

"It's not." Other Phineas shook his head. "Wait a second, though - if you and your Phineas are three years apart, then he'd be thirty-three. I would guess that his birthday at least is the same as mine? And your Amanda hasn't had her birthday yet-"

"Yeah, it's true," she cut him off. "We, uh - well, it was mostly my fault, I guess - got a bit carried away and, well, things happened." She grinned sheepishly. "He was nineteen yet when I got pregnant with Amanda - though he had turned twenty before I actually delivered."

"Well, accidents happen," Other Phineas observed. "At least it all worked out?"

Candace nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I was only twenty-three at the time, and even though we weren't meaning to have a child then … I don't regret it. Not now , at least. There were times back then… " She huffed out a breath. "Didn't make it any less stressful at the time, though, what with being brand-new parents and the stupid Force and everything. Ugh. Mom and Dad literally saved our lives so many times for those first two years - it's just… I don't know what we would've done without them."

"I'll admit that is not something I'm a stranger to," Other Phineas agreed. "There's nothing else quite like it, for sure." He glanced down at his watch and yawned. "It's almost two in the morning already, if you can believe it. I really probably should be getting some sleep of my own."

"I should probably go back to sleep too," Candace admitted. She saw the look of concern flicker up in Other Phineas' eyes and hastened to reassure him. "No, no, I'm fine now, I'm pretty sure. It'll be alright."

"If you're sure," he relented. When she nodded, he at last acquiesced and turned the light out again. "If you need me again, I'll be just two doors down on the right. Goodnight."

"I'll remember that," she replied. "'Night."

With a soft clicking, the door shut again, leaving the room in darkness broken only by the soft glow of the indicator lights on a computer tower sitting across the room. With a quiet sigh, Candace pulled the covers back up over her and rolled over onto her side.

Tonight, she slept alone. But she wasn't wholly alone in this dimension, at least. Though her bed was empty except for herself, there were still people here who at least could be considered her friends. And, perhaps more importantly, somewhere out there in the agitated and scarred spacetime continuum, her brother was similarly sleeping - similarly alone. She missed him with all of her heart. Tomorrow she was going to get up early and set about to remedying the situation. She was Candace Gertrude Flynn - she didn't belong in a bed alone. She belonged with her brother, and he with her. By now, she was ready to bet her entire life on one fact for sure.

No matter the agitation or the scars on spacetime, no matter the wildly unpredictable patterns of the flux waves, no matter the interdimensional interference - she was going to get home, and soon.

Because she was going to just about ready to destroy the entire spacetime continuum trying.

It was with a sense of reserved relief that Candace Two saw the first hints of daybreak peeking over the skyline of Four's Danville, painting the clear, cloudless sky with brilliant splashes of color.

If she had been one very much inclined to noticing beauty, she might have commented on the beauty of the sunrise. If she had been one very much inclined to admiring things, she might have admired the distinct lack of thick smoggy clouds choking out the sunlight that still hung in the skies of her home dimension, even twenty-six years after the dictator whose factories churned them out had been overthrown. Doofenshmirtz had ruled supreme for ten long, long years - doing nigh-inestimable damage to almost everything he touched. Even now, the scars of his rule were painfully obvious in the landscape of Danville.

Indeed, if Candace Two had been one much inclined to imagination, she might have looked out the window at the other Danville and imagined what her dimension might have looked like by now had the cruel tyrant never achieved power.

She turned away from the window and strode back down to the other end of the hall. It was academic, these observations. Candace Two had long ago made the decision to give up these things and that decision was irreversible. Imagination was a luxury that she simply couldn't afford back in those dark times. Doofenshmirtz needed to be deposed, his tyrannical rule brought to an end, and for that she'd needed to have her feet solidly on the ground.

Her brothers - she'd done everything in her power to prevent them from having to make the same sacrifice that she had. And it had worked out in the end, she supposed. At the age of six, she'd had enough, and decided to devote her life to taking down the dictator.

And at the age of six, she'd been laughed out of town, more or less. A six year old? Trying to upset the reign of the all-powerful Doofenshmirtz? Absurd! Now go back to your room and put your Dooferalls back on before the NORMbots come back!

But she'd not given up, not then, and not ever. They say that the years until a child turns eight are their formative years - years most crucial in determining how that person will turn out in the end. And she'd never given up on her goal, never ever. She'd seen some things that no child - no person - should ever have to witness.

The NORMbots weren't merely posturing when they threatened to destroy people. The laser plasma cannons they were equipped with were not mere replicas. And if you didn't have your traveling papers, you would be destroyed, blown into bits by a superheated beam of molten plasma capable of melting through concrete and steel in mere seconds.

It was a lesson that Candace's childhood best friend, Stacy Hirano, had learned the hard way.

So, no, Candace Two had never been one much inclined to imagination or fanciful thoughts. Well, she had been at one point, perhaps, but those days were long gone, and could never come back. There was no coming back from the things she had heard and seen and felt and endured in her lifelong quest to end Doofenshmirtz for good.

Still, the view out the window inspired within her a terse sense of relief. Day was here - another night passed without a sign of an oncoming attack. Unless you counted the lack of attacks as a sign that one was eventually coming, which it certainly was. She could feel in her bones that Doofenshmirtz was nearby, and wherever he was, when she caught up with him, he was going to pay.

She paced up and down the hallway one more time as the golden sunlight spilled slowly into the hallway, glinting off her sunglasses and reflecting in a jerkily moving patch of light on the ceiling.

Candace Two knew that the other Candaces here would never understand her. They might call her crazy, paranoid or perhaps heartless. These were all things the woman had heard before - nothing new at all. But you weren't crazy if it worked, and this had worked for her. Crazy? Perhaps - but she'd always been right. Paranoid? Perhaps, but Doofenshmirtz was always ready to strike, trying to catch the citizens of Danville off-guard. Heartless? Perhaps - but it was this method of thinking alone that enabled her to remain on top herself, that had enabled her to keep her family safe. She'd had to make many a hard decision, but with her family's safety on the line, those decision were perhaps not all that hard after all.

The struggle against Doofenshmirtz was not one without its victims - its casualties. It never could be, and she'd never have expected it to be. But so long as her family remained safe and sound, she would be okay too.

And they had been okay. Phineas and Ferb had come out at the end of Doofenshmirtz's reign with their childhood innocence still intact - with their sense of wonderment still alive within them.

It was one of the few things left on this earth - or any other - that could still make Candace Two genuinely smile. Phineas one time had said that she should smile more often - that he liked it when she did. But the hard truth was that… well, in life there just weren't that many things left to smile about.

One the doors in the hallway creaked and swung open, and a rather disheveled-looking Candace stumbled out of it.

Candace Two nodded in their general direction.

"Do you never sleep?" the woman complained. "I swear I could hear you pacing all night long."

Two frowned slightly, but shrugged. "The night passed in safety." That was the important part, of course. Another six hours gone in which no lives had been claimed. She couldn't quite understand the issue that these other Candaces had with her methods - if they worked, and they did, then what was the issue? But these other Candaces were different. Growing up the way she'd grown up… changed you. Not even necessarily in a goodway, but in a way that was necessary nonetheless.

The other Candace, whichever one it was, threw up her arms and groaned dramatically, shuffling off towards the bathroom. Candace Two contented herself with pacing the hallway once more. This section of the ninth floor was apparently unused, which had been the reason it had been chosen by Four's Phineas and Ferb to provide them with a place to sleep.

And of course, once again, no one in the entire building had spared even a thought to the ever present danger they were all in, and had gone off quickly to lay down, completely throwing away even the slightest thought of their own safety. Such a situation was intolerable - though by now, Candace Two couldn't say she was very surprised. So it'd fallen to her to keep watch, once again.

She couldn't exactly say she minded, really. Patrolling like so all throughout the night was… well, it had provided her something to focus on. It kept her alert and aware throughout the night, kept her mind focused and her thoughts sharp. Doofenshmirtz was coming back, of this she was sure. And she would ready when he did.

A handful of minutes later, the kid Candace poked her head out of one of the office doors, a slight scowl on her face that she struggled to keep there despite a large yawn. "Are we supposed to go back down into that stupid basement this morning too?" She rubbed a lump on the top her head, wincing slightly.

"You're free to do whatever you want," Candace Two replied. "If you want my protection, you'll stay here with Four's brothers. If not, well, have fun out there by yourself." She knew that the little girl going off all alone like that was practically a death sentence. If anything enticed Doofenshmirtz to attack, it'd probably be something like that. But Two had tried to warn them, and they hadn't listened.

So long as One didn't bring them in danger, she could do whatever she felt like doing. The only thing that really mattered right now was getting home, and the only people who could do that were Four's brothers.

"We don't need your protection ," One groused. "I'm going to go find something to do." She paced off down the hall towards the stairwell door and disappeared into it.

Candace Two watched her go, shaking her head slightly. One was… an interesting case for sure. She was just about the same age as Four had been all those years ago. And acted similar to the way Four had acted too. She supposed that one might chalk it up to Candace One not growing up in a dimension suffocating in the grasp of one like Doofenshmirtz.

It was reasonable, then, that One or Three or Four or Five or Six or Seven or Kevin or whoever was so naive about these things. After all, they'd never had to worry about it in the past. But they had to worry now , and Two had warned them all plenty of times about that fact. If they chose to keep disregarding her warnings, well, that was their choice, and she wasn't going to bother herself running after them - nor was she going to bother justifying herself to them. She'd tried to be understanding of the differences in their backgrounds and explain some of the reasons behind her actions.

But if they refused to listen, that was their problem, not hers. And she certainly wasn't going to put her chances of getting home at risk by letting down her guard. Even if she might have considered the idea before, after the brief conflict with Six in the place Four called 'Nullville', it was definitely not happening.

Four's brothers were the ones that were going to get her back, and they were the ones who needed her protection. If the other Candaces stuck close by, then they might manage to sneak under that umbrella too, but if they refused and ran off, Two was not going to chase them down, nor was she going to regret doing so. Regret only led to second-guessing yourself in times of crisis, and that was not something she could afford to be doing.

As she continued her endless patrol of the building, another door swung open, and another Candace emerged, stretching and yawning loudly. "Good morning , Two," she muttered, scowling slightly.

Two nodded. "Three. Have some issues last night?"

The scowl on Three's face was replaced almost instantly by a look of wide-eyed discomfort, until Three blinked rapidly and, with an almost visible effort, assumed a look of relative indifference. "M - maybe. What's it to you?"

Candace Two passed her staff back and forth between her hands mindlessly. "Means nothing." Well, of course, except that she know knew that in a time of crisis, the younger woman would be absolutely useless - not that she hadn't expected it before, but this had confirmed it. Three was just like the rest of them, really - naive, unsuspecting, and entirely too innocent for her own good. It was going to come back and bite her in the rear one day, that much was for sure.

Three just stared at her for a moment before shaking her head emphatically. "Whatever. I'm going back down to the basement, where later today I'm going to work on getting us home because I can do that. I can ."

"So you say," Two replied casually, turning and striding off down the hall. She could hear Three mumbling under her breath but really couldn't be bothered to listen in. The woman was well-meaning, perhaps, but good intentions aren't something you can count on to come through. Really, they were all but useless when it came time to act , as Two had found out long ago.

Not to mention that she was absolutely full of herself, something that had already caused no end of problems and would likely cause more before this entire thing was over.

Four's brothers seemed to have taken a liking to Three, which was the only reason Two allowed the woman near the assorted scientific equipment in the downstairs area anyway. Even that was risky, but when it came to science, she trusted Dr. Baljeet, and he trusted her own brothers.

And Four's brothers were the most important people in the bunch, right now. So whatever they said pretty much went, to any reasonable extent.

It hadn't been more than a few minutes, however, before the stairwell door opened again and Candace Three poked her head back into the hallway, making a reluctant face. "Where is everyone anyway?"

Two shrugged again. "Four's brother is there, presumably asleep." She gestured towards one of the doors in the hall. "I assume the other Candaces are in these other rooms - except for One, because she already ran off somewhere."

"Where?" Three echoed.

"Don't know, don't care," Two replied shortly. "Told her to stay close if she wanted safety. She ran off. I'm not going to bother chasing her. I've got more important people to worry about."

"Ugh, you're a terrible conversationalist," Three groaned dramatically. "Whatever. I guess I'll go see if I can find her. Geez."

Two blinked silently at her, and she rolled her eyes and stomped off down the stairs again, letting the door slowly swing itself shut behind her.

It was starting to grow rather late in the morning, though - having already reached six o'clock. Four's brothers were entitled to their rest, sure, but this was getting a little crazy. It'd been, what, almost six hours by now? That should really be enough sleep for anyone.

She'd just made up her mind to give them exactly one more hour, and no more, when another Candace stepped out into the hall, taking care to tuck her awkwardly large gun under the clothes that Four had lent to her.

"Two," Six greeted, half-smiling. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," Two answered shortly. Having reached the end of the hall, she turned and strode back in the other direction. She stopped halfway across, however, turning back around to face the other Candace. "Why are you following me?"

Six frowned slightly. "Uh… didn't you say before that if we wanted your protection, we ought to stay close to you?" She smiled, trying way too hard to look innocent and ended up look stupid instead.

But Two was hardly perturbed. "So long as you don't get in my way, you can follow me all day long if you want." She paused for a moment. "And you are right - when Doofenshmirtz shows up, your best bet for survival is wherever I happen to be."

There was a moment of silence in the hallway as Two resumed her stride up and down it. Six leaned against one wall, looking thoughtful. "About that," she finally said.

"About what?" Two responded sharply, her patience for this idle chatter wearing thin. "Is there something important I need to know?"

"Well, I mean, I was just wondering - about Darthenshmirtz." Six leaned forwards slightly. "What exactly did he do in your dimension? I mean, I crossed paths with him a couple times back on the Death Star, but he was never particularly… intimidating? Really, I mean, all the stormtroopers would laugh at him behind his back whenever he did something stupid, which was… a lot of the time, if I'm being honest."

"Well." Two narrowed her eyes slightly and leaned against her staff. "How nice for you." She hardly saw a reason to explain herself to the other woman. It was not something she was accustomed to doing, and she didn't really see a need to start now. Everyone at home knew the drill - when Candace Two said something, you did it. That was the way the world went round. She supposed the Firestorm Girls preferred it that way - there was a certain appeal to being able to simply follow orders and have all the tough decisions made for you by a higher-up.

In Candace Two's case, however, there was no higher-up. Even Monogram capitulated to her will now. She supposed it had something do with how the Organization Without a Cool Acronym had more or less immediately fallen into shambles after she'd tried to resign from the Resistance and return to civilian life. The Major and the handful of rescued agents tried their best, but they were no match for Doofenshmirtz. They were outequipped, outtrained, and outnumbered in the worst way.

It hadn't taken her long to realize that she simply didn't belong in the ranks of the noncombatants, either. You simply didn't walk away from the things she'd seen and the life she'd had. At the urging of the younger Four, she'd also briefly dabbled with romance, only to find it shallow and unsatisfying. Johnson was a good soldier, indeed, but no matter how she tried, she found herself unable to see him as anything more that, unable to elevate him to place in her heart where her family alone resided. Their attempt at a relationship had limped through about two weeks before he came up to her and asked her if she was actually interested in making 'them' work.

To which she'd replied very simply. "No." And that had been that, as far as anyone was concerned.

And it hadn't taken the OWCA long to beg her to return anyway. Not that she'd ever really trusted them in the first place, after all, Doofenshmirtz had thoroughly eviscerated the organization in his rise to power when they'd tried to stop them - why on earth would they be able to stand up to him now? She had a family to protect, and the only one she trusted to do that was herself.

It was for the best in the end. She was the one who'd devoted her life to taking Doofenshmirtz down in the first place. No one knew him as well she did - his habits, his mannerisms, the patterns in his actions - what made him tick. And when it came down to fighting back against his constant attempts to regain power, she was the only one equipped for the job.

And it was something she'd taken back to with relish. One day, she'd catch up with Doofenshmirtz. One day, she'd get him pinned down, backed against the wall, out of backup plans and with nowhere to run or hide. And then, on that day, she would finally make him pay for everything. For every last one of his countless crimes against humanity.

And until that day came, she would never rest in her efforts to bring it to pass.

"I'm serious," Six protested. "What happened? I mean, it's not like your world's got a monopoly on overbearing, corrupt governments overreaching power and trying to reshape the universe into their image." She paused for a moment. "I mean, the Empire was overthrown a while ago and I guess it hasn't really been a massive problem since then, I guess, but it certainly was for a very long time before then."

"How interesting," Two replied blithely. "I certainly feel no end of pity for you."

"I mean, they did blow up the entire planet of Alderaan," Six pointed out.

"Mmm." Two was hardly interested in this exchange. As far as she was concerned, it didn't particularly matter what had gone on - or even what was going on currently - in Six's home dimension. Her family was in her dimension - her city was in her dimension. And that was why it was the only dimension she even remotely cared about. Six's dimension could have been heaven on earth or an absolute hellscape - and it would really have made no difference either way to her.

She didn't mind that Six cared about her own dimension - that was to be expected. But if Candace Six had really faced off against things of even remotely the same nature as Two had grown up dealing with, then Six should also know that Two was hardly going to spare the energy to care about a dimension not her own when there were more important things on the line.

"Oh, come on," Six urged. "I'm trying to hold a conversation here. What's your universe like? What'd Darthenshmirtz do there? How different is he, really?"

Candace Two stopped mid stride and sighed. "First of all, it's Doof enshmirtz. I don't know what you keep calling him, but it's wrong. Or you're talking about a different person entirely, which, given your stories, is entirely likely."

"And…? What's he like?"

"Would you like to know?" Two stopped and looked at Six over the tops of her sunglasses. "The oldest memory I have is one of me and a friend crossing the street at the age of six. Doofenshmirtz had just taken over, and was still in the process of cementing his power. Consequently, the NORMbots were out in droves, and all on the highest alert." She paused for a moment to cast wary glances up and the down the hall. "Anyway, to make a long story short, it was a briskly windy day - and when we were stopped for traveling papers by a patrol, the wind ripped that girl's papers right out of her hands. And then she didn't have them. And the NORMbot destroyed her and moved on down the road, leaving me standing there, covered in the viscera that got splattered everywhere." She thought for a moment. "I was… about five? Or six. Roundabout there, at least. So if you want a picture of what Doofenshmirtz is capable of, there you have it." She turned away from Six and paced up down the length of the hall once more, stopping only briefly to push open the stairwell door and peer down into the abyss, ensuring it was clear.

Six's eyes were wide. "That… is horrible." She whispered, grimacing. "I mean… I was a stormtrooper for a long time as a youngling and a teenager, but I never really saw any… real, close-up battles at the time. I hated it then, though I know I was lucky now." She paused. "And I've seen some things since then, to be fair, but - but you were six ?" Blinking, she shook her head. "I'm so sorry."

"Eh." Two shrugged. "What happened happened. 'Twas probably for the best anyway - it's what made me decide to prevent the same thing from happening to my brothers and keep them safe. If I'd not made that promise, who knows what could've happened to them? Whatever it was, we'll not find out."

"I… 'for the best'?" Six looked utterly taken aback, as if she'd seen a ghost. "How can you say something like that was ' for the best '? Did it - did it not have any effect on you at all?"

Candace paused again in front of the other woman. "Not really. My hands were full keeping my family safe. There wasn't any time left for it to have an 'effect' on me. So I didn't let it."

"Do - do your brothers know about this?" Six asked slowly.

"Nope," Two answered coolly. "Part of that 'protection' thing I may have mentioned. My only goal at that time was to bring Doofenshmirtz - and make sure my brothers came out on the other side unharmed. I did both." She paused for a moment, debating whether to continue. Well, if any of the other Candaces here was going to be useful to her if push came to shove, it was definitely Candace Six. Now might be a good time to test her and see her reaction. "Now I have one more goal: bring Doofenshmirtz to bear for the crimes he's committed. Him, and the rest of his family, too."

Six merely shook her head. "That's… so sad. I'm so sorry."

Candace Two was instantly disappointed. She'd been hoping that Six would be more cool headed than this. But no, she was apparently as overemotional as the rest of them, and would also more than likely end up being useless in a fight, too. If Six freaked out this much over something that took place over thirty-five years ago, then how would she react if, say, the NORMbots were to swoop in and someone were to take a laser plasma bolt to the chest in front of her? She'd likely fall apart on the spot - which would inevitably lead to her absorbing a shot, too.

Candace Two made a mental note of that. Six cannot be trusted to watch my back. She's like the rest of them. Fragile.

It would be something to keep in mind when the time of Doofenshmirtz's attack came. It was fine, though - Two fought better alone anyway. She was confident in her skills with her bo staff, but it was a fighting style not very conducive to working in teams. Really, though, she could handle the NORMbots alone.

She wouldn't be able to save everyone when they came, of course. But she didn't need to. Only Four's brothers needed to survive - everyone else was expendable.

Okay, so that wasn't really fair. Everyone had some use in a combat situation, you just needed the right set of circumstances to make that use come out. Like these other Candaces, for instance - they could easily serve as handy one-use human shields, if it came to that. The plasma bolts from the NORMbots would basically explode anyone they hit, from the inside out.

Based on what Dr. Baljeet had told her once, it worked by pumping so much heat into the body that it literally boiled your blood and fried your insides, all in a fraction of a second. The one upside to that, though, was that human shields were quite effective at protection, if only from one shot.

"So… how are Phineas and Ferb anyway?" Six spoke up again.

"Huh?" That… was not a question Two had been expecting. Almost instantly, she grew extremely wary of it, and of Six's motives for asking. "Why do you ask?"

"I mean," Six clarified. "You talked about how you kept your brothers safe? And that it worked out for them. And you did mean Phineas and Ferb by that, didn't you?" Two reluctantly nodded. "So… how are they?"

Two frowned. "They're fine. Innocent, slightly naive, and too purehearted for their own good." Her face momentarily softened. "But they earned that. And I fought to let them keep it." She pushed her sunglasses further up the bridge of her nose and traded her staff to her other hand. "So yeah - fine."

"That's nice." Six nodded. "I guess you think a lot of them, then?"

Candace Two slowly turned her head to look her other self fully in the eyes. "Yes." Where exactly was this woman going with this, exactly? Two was getting a feeling that wherever it was, she wasn't going to like it.

Six grinned widely. "That's nice to hear." She paused for a moment or two, looking deep in thought. "So… what's going with them nowadays? With, say, Phineas - for no reason at all?"

"...I fail to see why this is at all relevant to our situation," Two replied brusquely. "Why do you want to know, anyway?" Candace Two had long ago realized that her enemies would try to come at her through her weakest point - her family. And she'd subsequently determined that that would never happen. She didn't exactly presume that Six was an enemy , per se, but these questions were treading on ground that Two was very wary about allowing anyone to tread. Very, very wary.

You could never be too careful.

"Oh, come on," Six urged. "You - what do you think of him?"

"He's my little brother," Two replied slowly, weighing each and every word. "He's… the most important thing in my life - it's why I gave mine to ensure he could live his."

"Yes, yes!" Six replied eagerly. "That's like, pretty much the way I feel too - he was the reason that I completely turned my assessment of my life upside down. He completely changed my outlook on things - at a time when I didn't think it was possible."

Two squinted at her through the lenses of her glasses, trying to decipher what exactly the other woman was rambling about.

"I was separated from him when he was just a baby, see - and when we met again like fourteen years later, we didn't even know each other. We were on entirely different sides. I tried to kill him, for goodness' sake. And then, the tables were turned, and he was given the most perfect opportunity to kill me - and he didn't. He saved me instead. And, well, I didn't know what to think at the time. But that was the moment when all the Empire's brainwashing unraveled inside my brain - and, as I later found out, I'd fallen in love."

Candace Two blinked, as the pieces suddenly clicked together inside her mind. She barely restrained the urge to roll her eyes and sigh as Six continued.

"...and, so, what I'm saying is, we're not all that different, you and me. But in my universe, Phineas, well, he helped me in more ways than I can really count. The way you described him earlier - it describes him perfectly sometimes. And yet, he's still the one I end up going to when-"

"Six."

Six halted abruptly mid sentence. "What?"

"You're the one who married your brother, hm?"

"Oh! I mean, well, yeah-"

"That's what I thought." Candace Two shook her head, and actually did roll her eyes this time. "Look, Six, your attempts to 'make everything better' or whatever are… a nice gesture? I suppose. Sadly, however, the problems I must deal with - the problems that my dimension faces - are not going to be solved by me having sex with my brother."

"Wait, no!" Six protested. "That's - that's not what I suggesting at all!"

Candace Two nodded impatiently. "Then what exactly were you suggesting?" She tapped her staff on the floor as she waited for the answer.

"I was just saying, well, I'm sure he cares about you." Six smiled at her, likely in an attempt to be relatable or whatever, but Two was hardly cognizant of her assay in that direction. "And you should give him a chance to show that. I mean, I'm sure you do - but you should give him a chance beyond just your sibling relationship. Because I'm sure if you-"

"Hmm," Two interrupted. "Yeah… nope." She shook her head. "Look, I've already given 'romance' a shot once, twenty-six years ago. It's not for me. I'm not that type. And I have too many important things to take care of to waste time with it again. And certainly not with my little brother. So how about you knock it off."

"That's what I thought too," Six replied. "But Phineas, well, he-"

"That wasn't a suggestion," Two broke in coldly. "I've heard enough."

Six opened her mouth as if to say something, but then she apparently thought better of it, shaking her head. "If you say so, I guess."

"I do." Two turned on her heel and resumed her too-long-broken patrol of the hall of the ninth floor of Four's brother's building. For a few minutes, Six stared at her silently, before standing up straight from her reclined position against the wall.

"Are any of the others around somewhere?"

Two didn't stop walking this time. "Three's off after One. I don't know where they went."

"Well…" Six seemed to hesitate. "I guess I'll just go back to the basement and wait for somebody else to wake up or show up there? I wonder if there's anything down there to eat."

Candace Two merely shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. After a few moments more, Six at last disappeared through the stairwell door, leaving Two alone once more.

She glanced down at her watch. It was about time for Four's brothers to be up - the extra hour she'd so generously extended them was going to expire in nineteen minutes.

The stairwell door creaked open, and another Candace stepped into the hall - by the sticker displayed on her shirt, it was Candace Four. "Oh… hi. Two," she said slowly.

"Hello," Candace Two acknowledged.

Four frowned. "I've brought food from home for breakfast if you want any. It's down in the basement."

"Mmm." Two thought for a moment on that. "Perhaps later." If Four'd brought something similar to the condensed supplement powder that the Tri-State Militia issued to combatants in her home dimension, she would be most pleased. You never really felt full from that stuff, but it provided enough nutrients to keep you healthy and functioning and only took a handful of seconds to eat - though 'ingest' was probably a more accurate term.

If she'd been home right now, she may well have eaten an ordinary breakfast - likely one prepared by her little brothers and delivered to the militia base especially for her. And they'd probably stay there and eat it with her, too. But that was because there, they were at least relatively safe. Here? Who knew what would happen the moment she turned her back.

"Where is my brother?" Four asked suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen onto the hallway again.

Two merely lifted the end of her staff pointed with it towards one particular door.

Four said nothing more, instead crossing the hall and disappearing through the door in question, leaving the hallway empty again - except for Two.

She resumed her tireless patrol, up and down the hall, as time continued ticking by. Soon enough the hour would be up, and she would rouse Four's brothers and they would return to basement and get to work again. And soon enough, they would figure out the way to get her home. Why was it so hard for them this time? Hadn't they done this already, long ago, as children? Two hardly understood any of the science behind this sort of stuff, but she was sure they had.

The fact that now , all of a sudden, it was beyond their grasp was infuriating indeed. But she tried to be understanding of their plight. Perhaps it was some 'sciency' reason that was being the obstacle here. She'd seen the Baljeet of this dimension briefly before he'd left the building, but although he had no doubt been useful, the one who they really needed here was Dr . Baljeet. He knew what was up with the spacetime continuum or whatever it was that bound together reality as we know it. Sadly, he was unreachable for now.

She briefly wondered what was going on in her dimension in her protracted absence. Well, Phineas and Ferb knew the drill if she was ever captured or killed by Doofenshmirtz - they were to inform the OWCA immediately , and Candace Two had left Monogram strict instructions for such a scenario. The Organization was only just barely capable of functioning without her, but it was still the second safest place for her brothers to be. She'd made it very clear to her brothers exactly how such a scenario would play.

And they'd respect her wishes, of course, as they always did. For all that she loved them, they knew not to cross her. Her every decision was formulated with their best interest in mind, and they'd long ago learned when was the time to relax and when was the merely unquestioningly obey. It was for everyone's safety, really - even if they didn't necessarily like every decision she made.

But that was life. It brought what it was gonna bring, and you just rolled with the punches and kept moving. There was no space for anything else.

Still, though she may have seemed strict, she was fair, and though there was not always time to explain, she always had good reason for her actions. And the honest truth was that she was more lenient with her brothers than with just about anyone else anyway. It was how, in a moment of weakness she now cursed, she'd let them convince her to go on a trip with them - a 'holiday' of sorts.

It wasn't something she'd really believed in.

"Take a break," Phineas had said. "You're always so busy keeping the town safe - but it's been over three weeks since Doofenshmirtz's attacked us. We don't have to go far - the OWCA will be able to reach us if we need to get back in an emergency."

"No," she'd replied resolutely. "This is my job. It's where I belong."

"Come on," he'd urged, smiling. "I know how important it is to you, but you've been busy for a long time dealing with the insurgency in Sector Seventeen, and we haven't gotten to really hang out together in a long while."

Ferb had nodded silently, as he was accustomed to.

"Won't let them replace one dictatorship with another," she'd responded.

"And that's great - I mean, it is really important, but didn't you just finally apprehend the leader of the uprising last night?"

"Well…" she'd hesitated. "Yes, I did."

"Then come on," he'd repeated. "Candace, we'll be with you the whole time - nothing bad'll happen to us - you wouldn't let it, I know. You've been running the OWCA for over two decades now, and I'm sure they can watch over your city for a few days without your immediate presence." He'd smiled warmly, in that way he did.

It had made her shake her head and chuckle slightly. They had been pushing this idea for a long time - on the order of months, at least. And she had just finally gotten around to permanently quelling Seventeen's insurrection. The issue was hopefully solved for good, though even if it wasn't, it would certainly be stymied for a good few weeks as the insurrectionists struggled to replace their broken-up power structure.

And so, at long last, she had relented. It had made her brothers just so happy, and their reaction to her approval of the plan had warmed her heart.

And it had also turned out to be a mistake. It was her fault, really. Her brothers couldn't have known about this. But she should have seen it coming. It would have been better for everyone if she'd remained firm, and continued denying their request. Maybe - there was a possibility that whatever Doofenshmirtz had done to rip her out of her home dimension would have worked no matter where she was.

Either way, there wasn't time to worry about that anymore. It had happened, and that was that. For now, her energy was best focused on keeping Four's brothers alive and well until they could get their science together enough to take her home again.

And that was what she was gonna do.

The rest of her day was all planned out in her head. Four's brothers would work on their solution to the problem, and she'd stand guard and ensure that nothing harmed so much as a hair on their heads until they were finished, however long that should take.

Then she'd return home - and would begin the long process of reversing whatever damage Doofenshmirtz had managed to inflict in her absence. Her own brothers would safe again, protected beneath her shadow.

And was the way things were going to go. She could tell that the other Candaces were clearly ill at ease with each other. Three and Four, and Five and Seven in particular seemed to really dislike each other. Her own suspicions of Seven were still present, though they had grown somewhat less major after a reveal that Seven was in fact a leftover fragment of a timeline averted with a time machine - a piece of Three herself, actually.

But whatever petty conflicts her other selves might have other their brothers - be it busting or romancing them - Two couldn't bring herself to care. So long as the other Candaces didn't do anything to hinder Four's brothers' progress, the others could tear each other limb from limb if they wanted.

All that really mattered - all that had ever mattered, in all honesty - was that Candace Two keep her brothers safe from the ravages of the overthrown but no less cruel tyrant. And she could only do that by getting home as quickly as possible.

And if nothing else truly mattered, her list of priorities in case of emergency suddenly became very easy to organize.


	21. Steam Under Pressure

Candace One was pretty sure she was lost.

In retrospect, it may have been a better idea to just head back down to the basement again. At least then she would've known where she was. But it was just so boring down there. There was absolutely nothing at all to do, and after spending so many long hours there yesterday, Candace One would have been just as happy to never have to go back there.

Still, though, maybe this hadn't been the best of ideas either. She'd randomly decided to get off the stairwell on the fifth floor, and now was walking through more empty halls with absolutely no idea of where she was or what she was doing. Her stomach growled at her, telling her it was breakfast time, but she'd yet to see anything to satiate that urge.

Well, she'd seen people working here yesterday. Soon enough someone would have to show up and she could get directions out of here if it really came to that. Of course, if she was to just follow the hallway all the way to the end, eventually it had to loop back on itself somewhere? She was just in a fancy office building, really. There was no way she would actually get lost in here, just… not know for absolute sure where she was in relation to the stairwell at any given time?

The hallways here all sort of blended into each other - and she'd not really been paying much attention to when or where she'd turned or gone anyway. She'd really just been trying to get away from Candace Two - and to find something to do.

This morning had already been unpleasant in more ways than one. The mattress that she'd been given to sleep on was… all right, at least. It wasn't as comfortable as her bed at home, for sure, but it had just been a mattress on the floor, so that was somewhat understandable, even if it still sucked.

When she'd first woken up, she'd gotten swept by the force of habit, and tried to spring up off the mattress in the same way she'd sprang out of her bed for the past month and a half. The only difference, of course, was that the mattress was a heck of a lot lower to the floor, resulting her tripping over her own feet as her knees buckled out from beneath her - ending in faceplanting painfully on the floor not six inches away from the mattress. Her head already hurt from last night, she didn't need to twist her ankles too. That would just be too much.

The incident had put her in a foul mood, even at such an early hour in the morning. And Two being her gruff and obnoxious self hadn't helped, either. Candace One didn't ask for much from life - she never had, really. Just to bust her brothers, just once. That was all she wanted, all she'd ever wanted. Was it such a hard thing to ask? Apparently so.

She was hungry, she was bored, she was lost, and she was far away from home. Far, far away. Could things really get any worse right now? She was hard pressed to think of a way they could. And what could she do about any of this?

Oh, that's right. Absolutely nothing. Because not only was she less than half the age of her other selves here, she was just… Candace. Candace Gertrude Flynn, the girl who constantly got into scrapes and couldn't really do anything about it except run to her brothers and get them to help her.

This sort of thing wore you down, especially when it was repeated time and time and time again. She was fifteen years old - the oldest Flynn-Fletcher child. Phineas and Ferb were her younger brothers, her kid brothers. She shouldn't have to run to them for every little thing, constantly getting shoved into the background by her little brothers.

It was infuriating, really. Everybody loved her brothers. Everyone loved their ideas. Every time they had a new plan, the whole neighborhood would so eagerly go along with it. But her? Oh, no, not a chance. She could hardly get recognition for anything with her brothers constantly showing her up.

...okay, so maybe that wasn't entirely fair. She did love her brothers, and she knew they loved her. Of course, the nature of that love had now been brought under heavy fire as well, from a source and in a direction that she could never have expected.

That was not an idea that she wanted to think about. Her life had enough issues without having to deal with whatever nonsense Three and Four and Six loved to spew. They might have been serious about what they said, but Candace One at least had the common sense to know that it was just that - nonsense .

Nothing more, nothing less.

And if she had to fight the Force for the rest of her life to keep it that way, then that's what she would do. It wasn't like she had any plans for her life. Oh, wait - she did . But when had her plans or dreams ever really made a difference? She hardly knew why she bothered with them anymore, honestly.

She stopped at a random chair sitting in the middle of whatever hallway she was currently in and plopped herself down with a thump.

Why did everything have to be so difficult? It wasn't like her friends had to deal with this same stuff. No wonder they thought it was 'cool'.

To someone like, say, Stacy, the annoying projects her brothers built were just… exactly that. Annoying things that her friend's brothers did all the time. And whenever she got tired of dealing with them, she could just go home and ignore them. It wasn't fair , really. And then Stacy gave her weird looks whenever Candace One would talk about how annoying and bustable it all was.

Of course Stacy would think that she was irrational and stupid for saying those things. Because Stacy didn't have to constantly live in her younger siblings' shadow, shoved into the background over and over purely because said siblings so so freaking good at everything that it brilliantly outshined any attempt she could make at just about anything.

It was a miracle that anyone stuck around with her, really, and even more so Jeremy. Candace One was still not quite sure how she'd managed to pull that one off, but however it had worked, she didn't intend to let it go. She would deal with the antagonistic Force and Jeremy's own antagonistic sister all her life to hang on to that . And sure, some people might call it… well, last night Five had called it 'codependent'.

Hmph. Well, Five could think whatever she wanted. Just because Five had managed to get some things right didn't mean she was the perfect epitome of everything Candace One was supposed to grow up and be. The woman may not have been as delusional as Three and Four and Six, but that certainly didn't mean she wasn't wrong in her own ways, too. Thinking she could just order everybody around like she tried to do? Uh, how about no?

Not to mention that she seemed to love hanging around that jerk Seven, who was hardly a nice sort of person.

Really, in the end, it just boiled down to not being fair . At home she was shoved around and ignored because her brothers were so much better than she was in almost every conceivable way. And then here - she was also shoved around and ignored, this time because she was surrounded by versions of herself who so much older and more full of themselves than she was.

And as the cherry on top, those same versions of herself also took an unhealthy interest in trying to get Candace One to look at her annoying kid brother in a romantic light, telling her that her boyfriend was apparently not up to the task. That was something that Candace had never thought she'd hear coming from… well, anyone, really. And she hardly believed it anyway. Jeremy put up with so much from her - it was obvious he was worth the effort to keep around.

No one else would tolerate the things she did, or understand the reasons why she had to keep trying to bust her brothers. Heck, Jeremy probably didn't understand either, considering Candace One'd never really bothered to explain it to him, but he still stuck around through it all, and through everything else he had deal with with from her.

He didn't seem to mind her flightiness or rambunctiousness or even the fact that her life was absolutely insane. And for that, she knew that he was the one . No one else would do those things for her.

And that's how she was going to keep thinking of the situation, no matter what Three or Four or Five or Six or Seven or any of them said.

...noticeably absent from that list was Two, but that was purely due to the fact that Two was just completely psycho anyway. She was pretty sure no one took Two's opinions or 'advice' - such that the paranoid woman had offered - seriously anyway. It was only by the power of her stick that Two managed to assert herself onto the group in any way at all.

Which was also something Candace One resented, but she could deal with that, at least, because everyone else had to deal, too, and her own chafing under Two's actions was somewhat relieved by watching the others suffer too. Which was probably selfish, but Candace One had suffered so much at the other Candaces' hands in such a short period of time that she hardly cared anymore.

At least in that respect, she wasn't alone. Like the way she was alone when the older Candaces ignored her or talked over her, or the way she was alone when Three and Four and Six tried to coerce her into saying that she wanted to commit incest with her brother, or the way she'd been alone when Seven had taken the liberty of literally throwing her out into the hallway last night. Like the way she was alone when her brother's projects caused her so much misery, and no one ever seemed to notice, or to particularly care if they did.

Candace One crossed her arms and sank farther down into the chair, feeling more and more disgruntled as time went on. The fact that she was really starting to get hungry didn't help matters either. She wanted something to eat , and to get that, she'd probably have to go back into the basement , and she really, really didn't want to go back down there.

But, of course, there was nowhere else to go. Four's house was infested with incestuous children and who knew what the rest of this Danville was like? Candace One wasn't sure she wanted to find out. If it was anywhere near as disturbing as Candace Four's disturbing life, then she definitelydidn't want to find out.

She just wanted to go back home , back to be being overshadowed by her own brothers, back to being swept up in their inventions and beaten within an inch of her life, back to a place that was familiar and friendly and although crazy, was not this crazy. Was that such a hard thing to ask?

It was all that stupid Do-Over machine that Vanessa's Dad had made. If she hadn't turned it on, then none of this would've happened and everything would be normal right now. Right now, she'd probably be in school - it was technically the second day of school right now. Summer vacation had ended, finally, and her brother's annoying bustable projects would finally be reined in at least a little by the responsibilities of education.

But of course, she'd pressed that button on the machine, and all this had happened, and now there was apparently no going back. Such was the story of her life.

"One?" a voice came from down the hall.

She cocked her head slightly to the side, trying to guess which of the other hers it was. This was another annoyance, too. All of the Candaces sounded pretty much the same, so when one of them walked up to you, you'd not be able to tell right away if they were going to launch into a ramble about how great incest was or not.

Four's Phineas - Phineas Four, or whatever his 'proper' title was supposed to be - had had the idea to get nametag stickers for them all which, Candace One grudgingly conceded, was a decent idea.

And then, of course, he'd turned around and used it rub in her face again just how much she stood out from the rest of group. "And I guess One won't need one since she's easy to tell apart from the rest of you." Hmph. What if she'd wanted a nametag?

Okay, granted, she didn't, but that was beside the point. At least she'd taken Five's advice and put her own clothes back on this morning. No more of Four's kid's clothes, not if she could help it at least.

Nevertheless, there was indeed a nametag stuck onto the Candace who was coming down the hallway towards her. Candace One rolled her eyes and groaned. It was Three .

Oh, of course it was. Because she could never catch a break, could she? No, the universe got kicks out of making her miserable. Letting her relax for even a second? No, you couldn't have that.

It just wasn't fair.

"Whaddaya want?" she asked Three, crossing her arms again.

Three raised one eyebrow. "I've been looking all over the place for you." She gestured up to a surveillance camera attached to the roof nearby. "I had to go the security office and get the guy there to trawl through the security cameras with me to find you. What do you think you're doing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" One returned. "I need something to do . Yesterday was awful and I don't want to go through a repeat of that again. So I decided to explore. It's not like you can stop me, anyway."

"Geez," Three muttered under her breath. "Well, come on. Four brought some food from her house and it's down in the basement if you wanna eat. You're gonna get lost up here all by yourself."

"I can handle myself alone, thank you very much," One said. "I am not a child." She narrowed her eyes at the older woman. "And I don't very well think that I'm going to go back down there with you and Four ."

"And why is that?"

"As if you have to ask," One scoffed. "Let me see… oh, yeah, how about that time last night when you all decided that surely the best thing to do with your time was beat me over the head with your gross lives."

"Yeah, well, you'll have to trust us on that one," Three replied slowly. "It'll become more clear later." She frowned a little. "Besides, you apparently came around a little last night, didn't you?"

"What?" Candace One echoed in disbelief. "Who - who told you that? Wh - was it Candace Six?" She shook her head. "Whatever, I don't care. Wherever you got that idea, it's most definitely not true."

Three frowned again, looking as if she was deep in thought. "But you will admit, at least, that us talking about Phineas like this is… different than if we were to mention, say, Ferb?" She paused. "I know it is, I mean, I was there . And… well, the realization that my feelings were so drastically different based on which of my brothers I was thinking about - it kinda scared me at first."

"I…" Candace One shook her head and pressed her palms to her temples. "What is your obsession with this subject?" she demanded. "Why do you keep trying to force me to see it from your point of view? News flash, Three - that's never going to happen."

"Like I said," Three returned, rolling her eyes. "You won't get it until you're older. But things'll happen, and eventually you will see why your brother can do more for you than Jeremy Johnson ever could." She paused for a second. "But I don't really expect you to get it now - that was a bit optimistic of Six, honestly."

"I seriously don't understand what you don't get about this." Candace One sank farther into the chair, internally refusing to get up. "Or maybe you do get it, and you're just too messed up to care. I don't know. The point is, no matter what any of you say - I am never going to change my mind. Never ever ever ever ever ever ." She didn't know what reaction Three would have to her final refusal. Part of her was morbidly curious to find out - would the woman pitch a fit? Start yelling at her like Five had last night? Get mad and actually try to hit her the way Seven had? Storm off?

As it turned out, however, none of that happened, although One would probably have preferred it if it did. Instead, Candace Three smiled in a way so utterly condescending that it made One's blood absolutely boil.

"You're just like me when I was young," she said. "Which I suppose is reasonable, given that you are me when I was young." She shook her head. "Either way, One, the point is, I was there . I know how you feel. Trust me. But if you're anything at all like me, which I know you are, eventually you will realize that… well, it's not as farfetched an idea as you think."

"Will you stop that?!" Candace One exclaimed, springing from her chair. "You're just like Five! The whole 'Oh I'm an older you so I automatically know better about everything' shtick is so tired and you really need to knock it off because I've about had it with everyone telling me what I should say and do and think and be !"

"No one's telling you what to be," Three said sharply. "We've got your best interest at heart, really, and I know-"

"No!" Candace One had had enough . This was just too much. "You don't know me, you don't know about me, you don't know anything! For crying out loud, aren't you the one who thinks she can be a mini-Phineas and Ferb?"

"That's not a matter of thinking ," Three returned. "It's a fact and it's how it has always been and how it was supposed to be from the beginning. Phineas and Ferb aren't inventors, the Flynn-Fletchers are inventors and that includes me as much as anyone."

"Right," One drawled. "Well, no matter what broken way it works in your broken world, that's not how it works in mine. And it should be proof enough that you have no idea what you're talking about when you talk about my past. Because you don't know me."

"I know enough about you, then," Three snapped. "Enough to know you're the same overdramatic, unruly, and unthinking teenager that I was for so long. And enough to know that the sooner you snap out of it, the better off you'll be."

"'the sooner you snap out of it, the better off you'll be'," One repeated mockingly in a high-pitched tone. "Okay, then, genius, how exactly will I be better off if I base my life around whatever mess you call yours?"

Three's eyes narrowed. "Well, for one, you'd actually find a place where you belong . Phineas may be your brother, but I know how your life works. The same way mine did. Your brothers have their reputation. You have yours. And wherever you go, that reputation follows you." She paused for a moment, looking somewhat uncomfortable. "You're Candace Flynn, the annoying girl who gets in the way of everything. Or Candace Flynn, the one who screams all the time and acts like a lunatic." She shook her head. "And even once you do come into possession of your brothers' gift again? It won't change. First impressions die hard, and you'll always be the annoying one, the odd one out, the obsessed weirdo. And in school you won't fit in. And when you go out to places, you won't fit in. And even - even in your group of friends you won't fit in, despite what they tell you. Because you're Candace Flynn, and your life will follow you everywhere you go."

"Right," Candace One said sarcastically. "And do tell me about the part where committing incest magically solves all those issues. I'm just dying to hear it."

Three shook her head again, grimacing. "It won't. Those things will… never go away. Unless you somehow manage to become a magically calm person like Four, you'll never fit in, and your life will always be insane." She hesitated. "But Phineas, he… well, in one way or another, he saw through all of that, and he fell in love with me. And it took me a precious long time to realize and accept it, but eventually... I did too. Because yeah, he may be my brother, but with him I… I feel like I belong. I do belong. And he's the one who loved me before I gave him so much as a hint that I'd ever return his feelings, and he's the one who helped - helps, even - me deal with the insanity I call my life. Without him, I… don't know if I could have stood it."

Candace One's eyes were wide, and her mouth was hanging open in disgust. "So - so let me get this straight," she said coldly. "The reason you're committing incest is that - that you're so insecure the only person you can feel comfortable around is your brother - which of course led you to decide that committing incest with him was okay because why not, I guess?"

Three frowned. "No, that's hardly what I was saying - if you'd actually listen to me for a change, you'd get that, but nooo… why should you listen to anyone? Surely not because they may actually know what they're talking about ? I'm trying to help you here."

"I don't need your 'help', and I don't want your 'help'," Candace One retorted. "I may worry about how I'm supposed to deal with how out of my control my life is sometimes, but I'm hardly so messed up as to think that the solution to it is Phineas . He's the cause of half of it, and he's definitely not going to be the answer! I don't care what you say otherwise, either."

"Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual," Three snapped. "The time in which other people could make me worry about my relationship choices is longpast, you know? I love my brother and he loves me and we-"

"You don't know the meaning of the word!" One nearly yelled. "You're not in love . You're just oh so terrified of not fitting in with the real worldthat you couldn't be persuaded to leave your brother's side like - like some child , and you somehow convinced yourself that was love ?!"

"What're you talking about?" Three crossed her arms, and lowered her eyebrows. "You know nothing about the reasons for my relationship, nor do you know the motives behind it, beyond what I tell you."

" Exactly !" Candace One pounced on the opportunity and seized it for all it was worth. "And you literally just admitted that you were so messed up that you clung to your brother far past what what was reasonable - past what should even be possible. You think you had issues 'fitting in' before? That's nothing ! You're your own problem, Three!"

"Now you just hold it right there," Three snapped, stepping forwards. One refused to back down, and stretched up onto her tiptoes so as to stare her counterpart directly into the eyes. "Don't you dare put words in my mouth. You're just a kid anyway - why do you think you would understand this? One day you will know that I'm right, but you know what? It might just be too late for you by then, because you can't get your head out of the sand long enough to listen to anyone."

"That is all I have been doing since I got here," One returned viciously. "Listening to everyone order me around nonstop. But you know what? Maybe it was for the better, anyway - because whereas before I thought you were an insane weirdo, now I know it. Because you yourself just admitted that the real reason behind your disgusting life is nothing other than the fact that you were such an outcast that he was the only one who would stick around, even after Jeremy left you. And so you convinced yourself that you loved him so that you wouldn't feel so bad about the whole thing." She paused. "You know what else? I may have my own issues with fitting in with other people, but unlike you, I can deal with it. I don't let it define me. And I definitely won't let it push me into a relationship with my brother ."

"That had nothing to do with it!" Three retorted. "You can just about shut up about it, too. I'm used to it by now. That's who I am, and I know it. You're not going to make me feel bad about it."

"Oh, I'm not, am I?" The corners of One's mouth turned up slightly. "Let me tell what: I'll get back to you when I let a crippling fear take over my life and turn it into chaos, because I can't deal with the work to straighten it out. Oh, wait! Only you are that insane. You think your brothers' inventions are the reason you didn't fit in? The insatiable urge to bring them justice? Or for you - your own inventions? Or was it just you ?"

" Me ?" Three spat, her face turning red. "And what exactly do you mean by that?"

"You know what I mean." Candace One gestured with her arms about wildly. "If you hadn't been such a complete flake, maybe you would have been able to handle those things. But, no - that's exactly what you are. You were so scared of not fitting in that you singlehandedly blew those chances sky-high and tried to tell yourself that it wasn't it your fault." She grinned widely and pushed onwards as Three took a step backward. "And now, you'll never be able to relate to anything normal - but not because of your brothers, oh no. It's all your fault, and you know it, don't you?"

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Three exclaimed. "I tried to be normal. You don't know how hard I tried! Or maybe you do , given that I was about your age at the time. You know how it feels, don't you? You're - you're no better than I am."

But the flimsy attempt to turn the tide of the argument was about as effective as a screen door on a submarine.

"Oh, no," Candace One returned. "Maybe you tried . But apparently you didn't try hard enough , did you? You couldn't try hard enough. What was it about you that rendered you incapable of fitting in with normal people, no matter how hard you tried? Why was it that your reputation stuck to you like glue no matter where you went? How come you couldn't simply let the weirdness slide off your back like Stacy does when she visits me?"

"One," Three snapped. "You'd better be care-"

"Well, whatever it was," One interrupted. "It looks like it won. And maybe you're right - maybe your brother really is the best fit for you. I mean, it looks like you couldn't manage anything else, right? I know for a fact that Jeremy is the most lenient, relaxed, and forgiving person on the face of the planet. What'd you do to him to drive him away? Who knows!" She saw Three's face begin to pale as the woman visibly winced. Apparently she'd struck a nerve somewhere in there. Wherever it was, she was going to twist the knife as hard as she could. These women would regret messing with her. "Congratulations, Three. You've earned you . You're so pathetic that the only people who could stand you was your immediate family , to the degree that you had to fool yourself into thinking that you're in love with your brother ."

"I - I am," Three stammered. "You - you don't know -"

"Oh, but I do ," Candace One snarled. "You're right , Three. You don't belong here. So why don't you run on back to the only person you could manage to get to stick around in the face of everything that you drag around with you? You ever wonder what would've been had you been normal- how different your life could have been? You might have had a normal life, you know. But, no, you can't . And your brother will never be able to change the fact that you will never be able to get away from that. You're a pariah , Three. I hope you enjoy your life - all alone . Because face it: you will always be alone. No one can relate to you. No one can empathize with the things we go through. And no one will ever accept you as I am."

Three's eyes were wide, and though her mouth was open, no words were coming out.

"Well, that's my life," One said softly, almost whispering. "Always on the outside. Always looking in. And it's all we're ever gonna get to do. Ever ."

"I - I - know !" Three burst.

"Well, good," One returned. "Then why don't you get out of my way and stay up here, alone . Because lemme tell you something, Three. It's where you belong . You've made your bed - now lie in it ."

For a moment, the hallway was silent. Candace One's fists were clenched, and Three had paled and was almost trembling in front of her. One narrowed her eyes. "Get out of my way."

She pushed her way past Three, leaving the woman alone in the hallway. There was no attempt to call for her or chase her down, and before she turned a corner, One took a peek back to see Three sitting slumped down in the very same chair One had once used, with her face in her hands.

Serves her right , Candace One thought. She'd had about enough with these freaks trying to sell her their incestuous relationship. At least now Three would think twice about doing so again. Which was definitely a good thing - the fewer, the better, as far as she was concerned.

As she paced through the hallways, she noticed a large map of the floor's layout hanging from the wall, that she'd apparently either never passed or never noticed before. Either way, it was a convenient discovery - as the alternative would have pretty much been to pace endlessly through the infinitely stretching hallways of Four's brothers' building. Which probably wouldn't have been that hard, but it would certainly have taken more time.

Not that she particularly cared about time anyway… given that the only thing she really had to do was kill it until Four's brothers finished their machine to get her home.

According to the map, the stairwell door was down the third hallway on the right, and then the second hall on the left from there. Okay, she could remember that easily enough.

Where was she heading anyway? Back down to the basement, she supposed. There was supposedly food down there? Whatever. She was hungry, kinda. The adrenaline rush from the heated exchange just minutes earlier had somewhat killed her appetite, but it'd be back soon enough. Though she was hardly looking forwards to running into whoever was down there ( especially if it was Four or Six), she nevertheless turned herself in that direction and eventually stepped out into the stairwell.

Her footsteps echoed off the tiled staircase as she descended, little by little. The sound rebounded off the enclosed walls, echoing weirdly until it dissipated into nothingness.

Had she mentioned that this was another thing she hated? Why did Four's building even have an elevator if it apparently never worked? She'd complained about this very thing many times, but no one really paid attention to her, of course. Well, maybe now that Three and Five would probably take her more seriously, she could use them as a mouthpiece or something, to get her message across to the other Candaces?

...though to be honest, that didn't seem very likely to work. Candace One herself worried about a lot of the very same things she'd chucked into the faces of her other selves. Perhaps that had something to do with how effectively she'd been able argue her point. Because Three and Five had both assumed that since One was a the younger version of them, they knew all about her life.

Which, she admitted, was probably true enough. But that cut both ways, of course - and the flip side to that was that Candace One also knew all about them . And whereas Three's and Five's memories of their and One's childhoods was blotted out by time, One herself could still recall in crystal-clear detail the events of the last summer. She knew what her own fears and worries and private insecurities were. They were things that she would never admit to anyone, not even Stacy in some cases.

But in the case of an argument, they were also more leverage than any reasonable person could ever hope to withstand. And no, it might not be entirely fair. But Candace One had fought with these things for a long time, and had gotten mostly nowhere with it. And these other Candaces were really just asking for it, what with all the ignoring and shoving around and cramming incest down her throat. Candace One did not ask for this, not one ounce of it. Indeed, all this might never have happened if the others had at least acknowledged her every once in awhile.

(And kept the gross parts of their lives to themselves .)

Was that just too much to ask of herselves? Apparently it was. But, for the first time in a very long time, Candace One wasn't entirely helpless. She had a weapon too, one that she could strike freely with if she saw fit to do so. And she'd never been very much inclined to excessive self-control. When her temper flared up, and she actually had the means to make a difference , you could bet that she'd use those means to the best of her ability.

It's often said that your own worst enemy is yourself, which, in this case, was coming literally true.

Panting slightly from exertion, she at last arrived at the basement floor, and kicked open the door for herself. It banged back against the wall as she strode inside. The room was mostly empty, except-

"Don't do that to the door," the lone Candace reprimanded her.

"Don't tell me what to do," Candace One snapped, walking across the room to the table in the middle of the floor. There was indeed food here. That was good, at least. The fact that she was back in this accursed basement? Not good. But she would deal with that after she ate.

"Geez," the other Candace said. "What's your problem?"

"My problem is being treated like a child," One retorted. She looked over her companion, searching for a nametag.

...oh, no.

Well, could this day get any worse? This was literally the exact person she'd just hoped that she would not run into. It was Candace Four - one of the other severely messed up versions of herself. Also, incidentally, the one that lived in this dimension, which made it just such great fun to be here.

Four frowned. "Well, there's no need to be so rude about it."

"Oh, I'm sorry ," Candace One snapped back. "Maybe if you actually acknowledged me for once, I wouldn't have to be so rude about it."

"Sounds like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Four returned, half-smiling.

But Candace One was hardly in the mood to be condescended upon. The mocking undercurrent that she was sure she could hear in Four's little quip got under her skin and really lit her up. Perhaps it had something with the aftermath of her already tumultuous morning. Perhaps Four was just that annoying. But whatever it was, she'd had just. About. Enough. This ended now , and for all time. She wasn't standing for this kind of crap any more .

"Four, you listen to me," she said as coolly as she could muster. "I want you, right now, to stop treating me like a child . I don't care how old you are - you're not my mother, and you never will be, so you stop trying to act like it, you hear?"

Four raised one eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

"What - what am I talking about?" Candace One spluttered. "Do you really need me to spell everything out for you? Are you that ignorant of everything going on around you?"

The half-smile on Four's face faded and her eyebrows slowly settled down into a clearly no longer amused position. "You watch your mouth," she warned.

"I've been 'watching my mouth' since the second I met you," Candace One spat angrily. "You and the rest of the us-es, since apparently none of you can get it through your thick heads that I am not a kid, and you can not order me around freely!"

"Oh, please," Four replied. "Quit being so dramatic. When has anyone tried to order you around? Come on."

"So dramatic? So dramatic ?" One clenched her fists tightly, to the point that her knuckles began turning white. "Let me give an example , then. Like how the night before last, you didn't see anything wrong with forcing me to sleep with your - your children ."

Four's eyes narrowed. "Leave my children out of this."

"Right," One scoffed. "Because, really, that's the point I'm trying to make here. Not emphasize to you that you don't see anything wrong with that?"

"There's nothing wrong with it," Four maintained. "Just because you're too young to understand doesn't mean it isn't true. Someday-"

"Someday nothing ," One interrupted, her voice peaking sharply, almost cracking. "No matter what you say, you'll never convince me of this - never ever ever ! You and Three and Six are a bunch of twisted freaks and the fact that you think you can beat this idea into me just goes to show how badly you're messed up. At least Three got what was coming to her - what's your issue, hm, Four ?"

No one was perfect. Everyone had a weak point. All Candace One had to do was find Four's and just like Five and Three, the woman would come tumbling apart. She had to find the foundation on which all of Four's stupid decisions were built on, and knock it away. It shouldn't be too hard, right?

"My issue ?" Four returned, her voice laced with spite. "First of all, there's some things you should know. I've been living this life for decades now, so you should know-"

"Wait!" One interrupted. "I'm pretty sure I've got it." She smiled vindictively. "You had an awfully strong reaction in the non-dimension to Kevin accusing you of being jealous of Three. Because she can do what you can't, hmm? What's that all about, Four ?"

Four snorted. "Kid, you'd better shut up and back off before you cross the line. You aren't getting anywhere trying to pit me and Three against each other. We've made up. We're on good terms now. I'm not jealous of her anymore than I'm jealous of you . You're gonna have to do better than that."

"Oh, but I will ," One retorted. She was mentally reaching back into her subconscious, dragging up her own most deeply rooted worries. And she was pretty sure that she'd just hit the jackpot. It was something that bothered her ceaselessly for years, something that she'd endlessly grappled with and had yet to overcome. And now, it was time to recycle that worry and fear and nervousness into pure ammunition against her opponent. Four was going to eat her words, and she was going to eat every last one of them. "Because you were never really jealous of Three for Three's sake, were you?"

Four raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Oh, you know very well where I'm going with this," One snapped. "I'm you, remember? I can read you like a book - I'm all inside your head, Candace . And deep down, I know why you got jealous of Three in the first place. Not for her sake, but for your brothers ."

"What exactly are you saying?" Four said, crossing her arms.

"Let me make it very clear for you." One took a tentative step towards the woman. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you got jealous of Three because you were afraid that your brother was going to prefer her over you?"

Four's eyes twitched slightly, but to her credit, she remained steadfast. "Maybe," she shot back. "But as I said, I'm over that. You're barking up the wrong tree with this, so why don't back off before I get mad?"

It didn't matter how steadfast she remained. Candace One knew which buttons to push. This was herself , after all, and you are always your own worst enemy.

"You say that," she retorted. "And maybe you even think you are. But lemme tell you something, Four. This isn't unfamiliar ground for me. I've lived here all my life. And I know how you feel. You're worried that you don't fit with your own family , aren't you?"

"W- what?" Four uncrossed her arms and then recrossed them. "What would give you that idea? That's - insane!"

"No," One corrected grimly. " You're insane, because you really thought you could ever measure up to your brothers? You thought you'd ever belong with them?" She laughed coldly. "I don't think so. You're just like me - a nothing. A nobody. And you'll always be that. Heck, we might as well not even be Flynn-Fletchers, really. Because no matter what you do, you will never belong in this family."

"You lie!" Four exclaimed. "Phineas and I are perfectly happy together, thank you-"

"Oh, are you?" One asked mockingly. "It would sure be a shame then. Because you really, really don't deserve brothers like them. Just think of how awesome they are at everything. And then think of how you fail at everything." She paused for a moment as a new thought occurred to her. "Oh, but I suppose that for someone as broken as you, that's awfully hard to swallow." Four opened her mouth, but One didn't give her a chance to speak, not even one word. If Four could dish it out, then she'd better be able to take it, too. "But you're gonna have to suck it and swallow it anyway. You're nothing compared to them. All of our childhood you suffered in the background of their amazingness, and it's exactly the same way now isn't it? You do worry about this, don't you? And that's why you got so freaked out back in Nullville, isn't it?" She grinned widely. "Come on, Four. Deny it. Deny it to my face. Tell me that you belong in this family. Tell me that you're deserving of them."

Four spluttered about for a moment. "Why - why do you care anyway?!" she finally managed.

"I'll tell you why," One spat. "Because for all the suffering you've shoveled onto me since I got here, you deserve it. And you're gonna take the biggest dose of your own medicine that I can shove down your throat, and you'll know how I suffered, what I endured."

"You just leave this subject alone !" Four exclaimed. " My relationship with my brothers is none of your business!"

"Oh, no, oh no!" One chuckled mirthlessly. "I should think that after last night you would know that argument isn't gonna stop me. It didn't stop you , so why should I respect it? I don't think so. You can keep your pathetic life to yourself, you got it?" She smiled viciously and took another step forwards. When Four took a step back, she knew that she had won. But there's no kill like overkill. Candace One was on a roll, and she wanted revenge . She wanted to those who had inflicted so much undue suffering on her to writhe in their own traps. "You know how life is for Candace Flynn, don't you? Or do I have to explain that to you too? Your messed up thing with your brother is never going to make up for the fact that you are never going to be able to measure up to them. They will always outstrip you in every way imaginable."

"That - that - that isn't true!"

"Oh, isn't it?" One cocked her head. "Pray tell, then. What exactly, have you done that they couldn't do just as well - or even better - without you? What exactly have you done that makes you think you measure up to them? What exactly did you do suddenly 'belong' with the two boys for whom the very laws of nature bend over backwards? You got jealous of Three for that exact reason - because you thought that surely, surely , if you could do what Three can, then you would fit in. Well, get with the program, Four. That day will never come."

"Phineas - Phineas loves me," Four stammered. "I - I - know this."

"Oh, sure," One derided her. "But that changes nothing . You know that, too, don't you? Come on, Four - I'm waiting. Tell me you belong with them. Explain to me how you relate to those so infinitely much greater than you? What exactly do you bring to the table?" She paused for a moment, eyeing the woman's suddenly wan complexion. " Nothing . That's what. Because no matter how I try, I will always be nothing compared to them. Always . And despite all you've done, incest notwithstanding, you still can't get away from that, can you?"

There was only silence, so she took a step forwards and raised her voice slightly. " Can you !?"

Still Four didn't answer, instead staring at her wide-eyed, having already backed up slowly until she ran into the desk behind her and having nowhere else to retreat. Candace One smiled again, and dropped her voice again. "It feels good, doesn't it? To be inconsequential - to be nothing? Well, apparently you've forgotten your place in this family. And I'm here to remind you of it. Because no matter what you-"

The stairwell door behind them creaked. Candace One spun around to face the newcomer, fully ready to defend herself if it became necessary.

"Hey… guys?" Four's Phineas stepped into the basement, but his words trailed off as his eyes took in the scene before him. Perhaps it was a bit incongruous, what with One's cheeks flushed with adrenaline and the much older woman cowering before the teenaged girl, as white as sheet, looking like she could be knocked over with feather. "What exactly is going on here?"

"It's none of your business!" One snapped. "Just back off!"

"I rather think it might be my business," Phineas countered, stepping closer. Though his words were obviously directed at One, he had eyes only for his sister. "Candace, are you okay?"

Four shook her head, saying not a word, though her complexion alone probably said more than she ever could have in any case.

"I said back off ," Candace One repeated. "This is between me and her, and you have no business getting between us."

Phineas shook his head. "Knock it off, One - this isn't funny anymore."

"Funny? Funny ? FUNNY ?!" One shouted, the sudden volume of her voice catching everyone - even herself - off guard. "You think this is funny ? You think I'm joking here? You think this is a joke ?" Candace One was seeing red by this point. She simply couldn't take it anymore. And she wasn't going to take it anymore. She'd had enough . " You're the joke, Phineas! You're the joke !"

Furious impulse seized upon her, coursing through her veins and flooding her brain with adrenaline as she wound back her arm, clenching her fist together. Phineas Four's eyes shot up and he recoiled back as she lashed out and seized upon a wrench lying upon that nearby desk.

Metal screamed torturously as she poured out her temper on the object, hurling the pretzeled rod away from her, listening to the crunching as it embedded itself in the drywall across the room.

There was no relief. Her anger cried out for relief, her mind for some place to turn to in her out of most desperate need. This was Dimension Four - there was no place. No person. No nothing.

And she turned and stormed off, her lungs aching behind her ribcage. There weren't many places to go in the basement, so she set a course to the nearest door - the stairwell door, again. The door slammed behind her with a frighteningly thunderous slam, and she stamped up the stairs with such anger that it seemed like the rumbling echoes would never fade.

As soon as she'd reached the next floor, she flung the door open, and stalked into an office door hanging open there. The flimsy wooden door slammed against the jamb, warping it off the wall in the stress, and she turned the lock with such vigor that the tiny metal latch sheared directly off beneath her shaking fingers. Muttering under her breath, she turned around and aimed a kick at the base of the desk sitting inside the small office room.

" Ow !"

The hard wood resisted the blow, the desk jumping at the strike, sending the junk on it rolling all over the floor. She almost didn't care about anything anymore. The anger boiling inside her had at last bubbled over the top, and everything was washed away before the torrential onslaught. She didn't know if she was ever going to be able to calm down. And she didn't know if she was ever going to feel like leaving the confines of the room.

...no, scratch that. She'd had enough. Until Four's brothers finished that stupidly bustable gadget to get her home, she was going to stay right here.

No force on heaven or on earth, Mysterious or no, was going to get her out, no matter what . The less she had to see of everyone else, the absolute better.

And that was the way it was going to be.


	22. Grass Roots Beginning

The thing that first tipped Kevin off that she wasn't home anymore was the alarm clock.

Or rather, the lack of one.

For the last five years of her life, she'd woken up at exactly five-thirty in the morning. At first it had been… not so fun, but she'd grown used to it over time, and now she could hardly imagine anything else. Indeed, it was the force of long-established habit alone that propelled her out of the depths of sleep even despite the silence that hung in the office she'd been lent to sleep.

She groaned and rolled over the bed, reaching over her nightstand, trying to figure out why her alarm hadn't gone off, when she'd suddenly realized that there was nothing there except hard floor. And that she wasn't on her bed at all - instead she was sleeping on a twin size mattress thrown haphazardly onto the floor.

She pulled herself up into a sitting position and blinked rapidly as the memories came flooding back. That was right - she wasn't at home at all. She'd fallen through a portal of some kind and, in one way or another, ended up in another dimension entirely, complete with another version of herself. Seven other versions of herself, actually, one of whom belonged in this dimension, and six of whom did not.

She checked her phone, the battery of which was rapidly failing, and saw that it was still early Friday morning. Well, this was a great way to spend a Friday. Hopefully Candace Four's brothers - and that other Candace, too. Three, right? - would be able to figure out the way home before the day was up. She'd been gone from home for two entire days now, and she imagined that the entire city was wondering after their mayor.

Kevin winced at the thought, worrying slightly about her city, her constituents, and her career. Dropping off the face of the earth for two days would surely have an effect on those, and it would very likely not be good. The city council would have to postpone everything until she returned, but if she was gone for too long, they'd appoint a mayor pro tempore to cover for her. The police would probably be called, but she knew that the DVPD wouldn't be able to find anything. According to Candace Three, she'd fallen out of the universe entirely.

That was a bit beyond the capabilities of the local police station.

But she didn't really worry about any of that so much as she worried about her family. What would it be like for Wilma for her to suddenly disappear without so much as a trace? Or even a hint of her impending departure? He'd probably worry himself sick. And her brothers, too, and her parents, and her niblings. She couldn't imagine the amount of worry they must all be experiencing right now.

Of course, she knew that was safe and sound, having a place to sleep, and a change of clothes, and food to eat. But they wouldn't know that. Heck, they'd hardly be able to jump to the conclusion that she'd traveled - or rather, been pulled against her will - into another dimension entirely. Like… that wasn't a thing that happened, except in science fiction films. It couldn't ever happen in real life, could it?

Well, apparently so.

Kevin pulled herself to her feet with a sigh, and she picked up the clothes folded neatly on the desk that had been pushed out of the center of the room to make space for the mattress. Maybe today would be the day that Four's brothers got her home. And all the rest of the Candaces, too. Maybe.

She would say 'how hard could it be', but considering the picture that Phineas Four'd painted for them all last night on just what the prospective machine would have to do, she decided it might be for the best to avoid that thought. She still didn't know what 'bring down the whole roof on our heads' would mean in regards to the spacetime continuum itself, but she was fairly sure that whatever it meant, it would be a bad thing to happen.

Probably very bad.

She stretched and pushed open the door of the office she'd slept in, stepping out into the carpeted hallway. She'd not really expected anyone else to be up this early, and if the amount of closed doors in the hall was anything to go by, then she was probably right. Heck, Candace One had slept to almost eleven o'clock yesterday - though that was probably different, given that it'd been almost two in the morning by the time they'd managed to get to bed. Plus she was a growing teenager still, which probably also had an affect on things.

She stood in the hall, not really sure what to do. She hardly knew much of the layout of this building, or what it contained, beyond the stairwell and the basement at the very bottom of that. Maybe she should go back to the basement? That… would likely be the best option. It wasn't particularly something that she was looking forwards to, but what could you do? She was entirely reliant on the hospitality of Candace Four and her brothers here. Which, incidentally, was pretty much the reason she was so ready to swallow her internal misgivings about Four's relationship with said brother.

It was something that Five and Seven could have stood to try doing, too. They were lucky that no one had tried to take them to task for their constant outpourings of harsh words. Sure, the knowledge of what Four was partaking in was deeply disturbing, but Kevin hardly felt such a deep connection to the issue.

Really, Candace Four'd made all her own choices, and even if they were choices that Kevin herself found repellent and would never so much as think of copying, it didn't really affect Kevin in any way, did it? And Four had been rather pleasant regardless of who she was sleeping with.

That was definitely something that Five and Seven could stand to learn. You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, after all. You can have deep-seated differences with people and still compromise on other issues.

Of course, there was also a time when compromising and working past differences was no longer feasible - like her own experiences with Stanley Hirano - but she'd hardly seen enough of Four to make that decision yet, and in any case, considering how dependent she was on Candace and Phineas Four's hospitality for… everything here, she wasn't sure what exactly would be motivation enough for her to make that decision. Incest was disturbing, but… it didn't really have an effect on Kevin's own well-being, so she was going to make every possible effort to put up with it.

"What're you doing, Kevin?" someone asked from behind her.

She spun around to come face-to-face to one of the few other versions of herself that she could instantly identify on sight - Candace Two. Aside from little Candace One, the other hers really all pretty much looked the same. Six had once been identifiable by her almost bathrobe-like clothes, but Four'd lent her some more ordinary things to wear and so that advantage had been lost. "I'm guessing I'm going to head back to the basement? Maybe there's leftover food down there. I did see one of those mini-fridges last night." She paused for a moment. "Wait, how'd you know it was me? I haven't even put a nametag on yet."

Two's eyes were invisible behind the darkness of her omnipresent sunglasses' lenses as she answered. "Almost all of you all have different heights - some differences are subtle, but they're there. Not to mention that One's a kid, Three's hair is cut about an inch shorter than yours, Four went to her own house last night, Six's got a very distinctive walk, Seven's got the whole staticy thing going on, which alone would make you and Five the only ones who are left." She gestured with her stick to the room Kevin'd come from. "Besides, you slept in there. I've been keeping watch all night, and I know after you shut the door, no one entered or left."

"...whoa." Kevin blinked. "That's… impressive? I guess?"

Two shrugged. "You don't survive by being stupid." She paused and took a breath. "So you're going downstairs again?" When Kevin nodded, she shrugged again. "You know that being down there without me means I can't keep you safe?"

"That's okay," Kevin assured her. "I'm sure Four's brothers appreciate your efforts more than I could anyway. I wouldn't want to ask you away from them to bother with me."

"Wouldn't leave them even if you asked," Two snorted.

"Then it works out perfectly, I suppose," Kevin returned. "I'm going to be going now - I'll wish you the best of luck in your endeavours up here." She smiled as warmly as she could muster - which was something she was rather adept at doing on command now - and began walking away. "I'm sure they all appreciate your efforts as much as I do. Keep up the good work."

Two frowned, but said nothing in return as Kevin reached the stairwell door and slipped inside. Kevin was normally quite confident in her skills in bringing people over to her side, or at least getting on decent terms with them if that wasn't possible. Two, though… yikes. The woman was tricky to figure out, that much was for sure. But she had that stick, and all the other Candaces generally deferred to her instead directly confronting the woman to her face.

That didn't mean the others were happy about though - and it didn't take a particularly observant person to figure that one out, either. They really made very little effort to hide it - often only waiting until Two's back was just turned to grumble and complain. Still, no one had actually dared to cross her, and Kevin hardly intended to be the first to do so anyway. She just wanted to get home, not get in fights - and definitely not in fights with the woman who stood head and shoulders above the rest of them and, if nothing else, at least acted like she would have no problem whatsoever with significantly increasing that gap between her and anyone who crossed her.

Definitely not.

The walk down the spiraling staircases into the basement was not a long one, per se, but it was growing to be tiring, especially when she was forced to take it having just woken up only minutes ago. Nevertheless, she persevered, and soon enough was at the bottom. The door was unlocked - which was a good thing, considering she hadn't really given all that much thought to what she would do if it hadn't been.

As she pushed it open and stepped inside, she saw that the room was empty, just as the upstairs had mostly been. Well, that didn't bother her toomuch. She walked across the room to the small refrigerator that she'd seen the previous night and poked around inside for a little bit. While most the leftovers were those sandwiches filled with that 'cheese' stuff that everyone else had had no problem devouring last night, there was still some of the salad stuff left. Apparently Four's brothers had ordered a huge amount of it - far more than she would possibly be able to eat in a day or two.

Whether that was because they intended to help her out or because they were expecting her to have to stay here for that long was another matter. She didn't really want to think about the latter option - judging by the size of the tupperware bowl, there was enough stuff in there for a week at least, and she really hoped that it wouldn't take that long to get home.

Everything in the basement was silent as she ate and wandered about, poking here and there, partly of curiosity, and partly out of boredom. Have you ever thought really, really hard about boredom? She looked at the plans and blueprints and models scattered about on some of the desks, but quickly determined that it was absolutely of no use at all to try deciphering them… they may as well have been in another language. Heck, they may have been in another language for all she knew, after all, Six could speak English just fine but apparently couldn't read a lick of it. How that had worked, she couldn't even begin to imagine.

At last however, she found herself over near a fairly sizeable bookshelf and decided to get something to read. Most of the books looked decidedly uninteresting - ones with titles like All You Need to Know About Zeta Radiation - but eventually she settled on what appeared to be some sort of encyclopedia. It wasn't exactly going to be the most interesting of reading material either, but at least it would be understandable. And who knew? Maybe she'd find something halfway interesting to pass the time.

It wasn't particularly like she had a choice in the matter, really.

As she sat in one of the chairs with the heavy book open on her lap, she didn't exactly lose track of time, nor did it really begin flying by, but… it did pass, slowly but surely. And eventually, by the time she'd gotten halfway through the 'G' section, she was interrupted by someone bustling into the door. Upon glancing up, she recognized Candace Four - well, recognized her nametag, at least.

"Oh!" Candace Four exclaimed. "I didn't expect anyone to be down here yet." She paused. "You are…?"

"Kevin," Kevin helpfully supplied her name. "I think I woke up before anyone else. Except Two, I guess. But she said she'd been up all night, so I don't know."

Four frowned, and set a large box of something onto the table in the center of the room. "I brought a bunch of breakfast stuff. The kids're - well, they should be right behind me, and, well, the house is still a wreck but I haven't had time to clean it yet."

"That's very kind of you," Kevin replied, though her stomach was already turning at the thought of what might be inside that box. It was a good thing she'd already eaten, or she might well have lost her appetite entirely.

"Mmm hmm," Four nodded. For a moment there was silence, but then she spoke up again. "You don't happen to know what Phineas was up to last night?"

"No?" Kevin tilted her head and tried to recall as best she could, but it didn't really help. "He was still down here doing whatever by the time I went to bed - is something wrong?"

"No, no, no, no," Four hastily responded, although her face still somewhat belied her rushed answer. "I was just… wondering, is all." She mumbled something under her breath, but then shrugged. "I guess it's not a huge deal anyway."

"Ah." That was really all she knew to say, based on what little information she had about the situation.

Four glanced around behind her, as if expecting someone to be there. "Where did they…?" She walked back to the stairwell door and pushed it open, leaning out into the staircase. "You guys quit messing around on the stairs - come on!"

"Alright, Mom, we're coming, we're coming."

Kevin raised her eyebrows slightly as Four returned to the table, but more so as two children trooped into the room after her - a boy and a girl. So these were the Xavier and Amanda she'd heard about - and caught only fleeting glimpse here and there of yesterday? Huh. Candace One had been right - Amanda did look a lot like Four's brother, which, of course, only made sense, but the resemblance was almost uncanny.

Wait, no , she corrected herself. Names are swapped here, remember? So the boy is Xavier , not Amanda. And vice versa, I suppose.

That also only made sense, given what she'd seen so far of this dimension, but it was still really weird to look at the boy and try to apply that name to him. Oh, well, she could manage.

Amanda… no, Xavier noticed her sitting there, apparently, and turned to face her, waving. "Hey." He paused, frowning slightly. "You do look just like Mom - which is reasonable, I guess. And it's not like Aunt Candace expressed any surprise about how she looked last year. Huh - how do you keep each other apart, then?"

Kevin glanced at Four for a split second. "We, uh, have a numbering system? You know, everyone's got a number and that's generally what we go by."

"Oh, which number are you, Mom?" Amanda - the actual Amanda - asked, looking over her shoulder.

Four made a funny-looking face for a second. "I'm number four - four of seven."

"Seven?" Xavier blinked. "Which number are you, then?"

"Why are you four, Mom?" Amanda asked in the background.

"I'm not actually a number," Kevin answered. "There's eight of us, but only seven numbers because I have a different name - I'm Kevin." She saw the look on the children's faces and decided to go ahead and explain. "Your dimension has names switched according to gender. Actually, all of them seem to, aside from mine. So that's probably why it sounds funny to you - but it's true."

"Neat," Xavier replied, looking thoughtful. "So I guess all our names sound backward to you too, then?"

Kevin rolled her eyes slightly, and then caught herself and stopped - after all, there was no need to offend the boy by making him think she was rolling her eyes at him , even if he was not of voting age yet. "More than you know."

"But why are you number four, Mom?" Amanda repeated. "Did you just pick that one?"

"No," Four said. "We got given numbers by Two and just stuck with them because…" she paused momentarily. "Because reasons." She made a face at Kevin, who shrugged slightly. Two was… an interesting character, for sure. Who knew how she'd behave around Four's kids?

Honestly? Given what Two'd said about keeping Four's brothers under her protection, probably exactly the same way she'd behaved around the other Candaces - cold, distant indifference that was blithely uncaring about anything they did, so long as it didn't cross her wishes.

"It's neat," Xavier spoke up. "You're all from different dimensions, and now you're all here! How does that even happen?"

"I have no idea," Kevin said. "That's what I'm hoping your un - father? - will be able to figure out."

"Is your dimension very different from ours?" he asked. "I mean, Mom's told us about one time she went into another dimension before, a really long time ago, and how it was way different from ours."

"You could certainly say that," Kevin answered noncommittally. She glanced over at Four. "Didn't you say one time that you'd been to Two's dimension before?"

Four nodded. "Yeah… it was that time, too. That's the reason I knew Two, though it hasn't really helped much."

"Number Two is from the dimension you went to, Mom?" Amanda asked. "That's pretty neat - we should go ask her what that was like."

"No, no, you should not do that," Four hastily interrupted. "You should probably leave Two alone. She… doesn't like to be bothered." She glanced over at Kevin, and mouthed something that Kevin couldn't really interpret, though it was pretty obvious what it was supposed to mean anyway.

"Your mother's right," Kevin agreed. "Two is very… focused. She probably wouldn't take very kindly to distractions." She smiled reassuringly at Four, who nodded thankfully.

"So what is everyone like, then?" Xavier asked. "I would guess you're all a little different - I mean, we already met the one who was our age, too. But aside from her and you and Mom, there's still five others?"

"You already met Five, too," Four muttered. "Though that was kinda a different situation."

"Do you have kids that look like us, too?" Amanda chimed in. "Are they very much like us? Who's their dad?"

"I don't have kids, no," Kevin answered. "Never really wanted any. I'm busy with work a lot - running a city is harder than you might think - and Wilma doesn't really want to have kids either."

"Wilma?" Amanda asked. "That's - oh, wait." She frowned.

"It's the female version of 'William'," Xavier remarked. "But you run a city? What do you mean by that?"

Kevin couldn't quite keep herself from letting out a small smile. "I'm the mayor of Danville," she said. "It's been my dream job for a long time." She paused, trying to think. "I first set my mind on it in fourth grade, I think. Wilma was the one who gave me the idea, and it really stuck with me. And now here I am. I love it, though. It took me ages to finally reach it, and I wouldn't give it up for anything." She smiled again, thinking back to the last race - the race that had ended up in her eventual triumph over Stanley and some guy named Regina. That had certainly been one of the high points of her life, up there with when she'd first become an aunt.

"And your brothers?" Amanda insisted. "Do you even have brothers?"

Xavier glanced over at his sister, but the angle he was standing at obscured his face from Kevin. She shrugged and replied anyway. "They're fine. We're on good terms." She grinned. "Of course, I did tell them if they didn't vote for me they could forget about getting a Christmas present from me."

"Say, I never asked you your last name," Four suddenly spoke up. "It wouldn't happen to be 'Clarke', would it?"

Kevin nodded. "How'd you know? But yeah, that's it."

"Huh. That's… weird." Four looked to lapse into deep thought. She tapped on the surface of the table for a moment, then got up and disappeared behind the stairwell door.

"So what are all other versions of Mom like?" Amanda repeated an earlier question. "Do any of them have kids?"

"You know, the press pool could take some lessons on polite questions from you two," Kevin commented. She looked up at the roof in thought. "Well, let's see… you said you met the one who's your age - that's One. And then there's Two, who we already talked about. And Three. Three's some sort of inventor or something? Like your father, I suppose. Uh, I'm pretty sure she's got the same thing as your mother going on with her own brother, too."

"Really?" Amanda interrupted. Well, so much that press pool thing. She poked her brother in the shoulder. "I told you so."

"I guess so," Kevin resumed. "Don't know much else about her, though. Obviously Four's your mother. And Five's like… she married somebody named Jeremy? I'm pretty sure she's got kids - I guess they adopted."

"Yeah, Mom said that Five was the one from last year," Amanda nodded. "That's… kinda weird. I wasn't really expecting to meet her again."

"I suppose it would make sense, though," Xavier mused aloud. "If every version of Mom was pulled here, then it would stand to reason that she'd come too."

"I guess?" Kevin shrugged. "Then there's Six, who… I don't know. She lives in outer space and can't read English and likes to shoot things, apparently. At least, she carries that gun of hers around an awful lot. And she, uh, married her brother? Somehow."

"Outer space?" Xavier's eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean by that - like, does she live on a space station or a different planet or what?" He brushed off his sister's hand. "C'mon - quit poking me."

"I to-o-old you so." She smiled slightly.

"Different planet, I think," Kevin responded, choosing to ignore the lattermost of the conversation between the two children. She had to keep in mind that this was how these children were raised - they'd have no issues with the subject. "I think she said it's somewhere like… uh…. Korcant? Or something like that - anyway. The last one's Seven." She frowned. "Seven is… actually Three? Somehow? And she does this weird thing with disappearing every now and again. I think somebody said she doesn't exist? I can't give an immediate explanation for how that works."

"She doesn't exist?" Xavier echoed. "And disappears every now and again?" He paused. "It sounds like she might be an anomaly of some kind."

"She is," Four said, suddenly back from wherever she'd gone off to for that handful of minutes. "As far as I understand. Something to do with time travel, I guess? But yeah, that's right."

"Temporal anomaly? Wow." He looked thoughtful. "I should ask her what that's like - it must be weird."

"Good luck with that," Kevin rejoined. "She's hardly a pleasant person to talk to. Talks to about Five, and that's it that I've seen."

"So where is everybody, then?" Amanda asked. "If there's all these other people here, of course?"

"Sleeping, I guess?" Kevin tried to check her phone for the time, but saw that it was dead. Well, that was nice. "You have the time, somebody?"

"Past seven-thirty now," Four replied. "I'd guess some of them would be up by now. Phineas's up, and he's, gonna be coming down in a bit."

"We should go meet all them," Xavier decided. "It'd be neat." He turned to his mother. "Can we?"

"I…" Four hesitated. "I've got some stuff to do down here that I've got to do, but… well, I guess it'd probably be okay?"

"Come on, Mom," Amanda pleaded. "I'm fourteen now, you know."

"I know, I know." Four sighed. "I guess it's alright. So long you stay out of Two's way, you'll be fine, I guess." She paused. "See if you can find Three - I know you'll be okay with her."

"I'll go with you, if you want," Kevin added. "I kinda want to find something to do besides sit here all day again anyway. And I can steer you clear of Two, too."

"Yes, yes," Four agreed, nodding. "I'd appreciate that, actually - if it's not a problem, of course."

"Not at all," Kevin assured her. "It's not like I had any plans for anything anyway." Well, that wasn't entirely true - but what plans she did have for today had all been utterly dashed by that minor detail about falling out of the universe. That tended to mess up things when it randomly happened to you.

"And we can show you around the building!" Amanda added. "We know all about it. There's actually a good amount of stuff to do here, too, you just have to know where to find it."

"Sounds like a plan then." Kevin stood up, stretching, and carried the encyclopedia back to its spot on the shelf and put it away. It'd hadn't really been all that interesting anyway. She had learned a fair amount of things about apples and bandanas and couches and drag racing and elevators and french fries and gemstones, at least, none of which she was probably going to remember for more than a few minutes. Or seconds, more realistically.

"Apples are in the rose family," she commented randomly as she held the stairwell door open for the two children to use.

"That's true. Their scientific name is Malus pumila ," Xavier said. "They're pome fruits, and grow on deciduous trees, too."

"I… suppose so," Kevin shrugged, feeling slightly awkward despite herself. "Sounds right to me, I guess." See? She'd said she wasn't going to remember the stuff from that article on apples for long.

They'd walked up to about the sixth floor, when suddenly from directly beneath, the sound of a door being thrown open could be heard, followed by someone stomping very emphatically and rapidly. Amanda and Xavier leaned over the staircase railings, looking downwards at whoever it was.

"Hey, that's the one who's our age," Amanda said. "She looks mad about something. What's she doing?"

"Looks like she's going downstairs? Guess into the basement," her brother replied.

"You think we should follow her?"

Xavier shrugged slightly. "Mom can handle her. Come on, let's go."

They resumed walking up, up, and up, until the ninth floor was at least reached. It really was quite a climb, and after taking it twice, Kevin could safely say that she was growing tired of it. They passed Four's brother as they stepped out onto the floor.

"Hey, guys - and Kevin," Phineas Four greeted brightly. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Hey, Dad," Amanda replied. "We're going to meet the other versions of Mom. She told us to find number three."

"I see," he said. "Well, I'm going to the lab to get working again. Be sure to tell Three that when you find her - I haven't been able to." He paused, and suddenly seemed to be talking to someone behind them. "I'm going now, Two - you coming with?"

"Of course." The sudden voice behind them startled Kevin slightly, and everyone turned around to a faceful of Candace Two standing like rightthere. How had no one not heard her walk up?

" You're number two?" Xavier asked. "My mom's been to your dimension before? What was that like?"

" Xavier ," his sister hissed. " Remember what Mom said? "

Two reached up and straightened her sunglasses slightly. "They're your kids?" When Phineas Four nodded, she continued. "'Twas a long time ago, kid. I've got more important things to do now - like keeping your father alive." She gestured to the stairwell door. "We going?"

"Yeah, yeah," Phineas Four replied. "Don't worry guys, we'll talk more about that later - maybe see if we can get the OWCA files from the incident declassified or something." He turned and disappeared out into the stairwell, with Two following closely behind.

"Mom was right," Amanda said, rolling her eyes. "She's rude. I mean, what the heck?"

Kevin shrugged slightly. Yeah, Two was kinda rude, she supposed. But whatever. It all kind of fell into that 'not getting in fights' thing that she'd mentioned before. She supposed that functioning as a pseudo-babysitter for the children that another version of herself had had with her own brother, all while in another dimension - a dimension in which she was the stranger, rather than all of them - would probably be a weird thing to put on her résumé. But, hey, at least she could say she'd done it?

Yeah, because this was going to come in handy later.

"Come on," Xavier said, interrupting her thoughts. "Let's go meet everyone. This'll be neat."

Kevin shook her head. Yes, she supposed that was one way to put it. It was dripping with childlike innocence that failed to perceive the almost inevitable conflict that had already racked their group, but it somehow still provided a decent grasp of the situation.

Because despite all of that - and despite all the bad things that could have happened to her - everything so far seemed like it still might work out in the end. She was okay for now, she'd eaten, and slept well, and had a chance to clean up and change clothes, and been lent a place to stay.

So, yeah, in certain manner of looking at it, you might well say that was 'neat'.

Ah, the innocence of childhood, and how short-lived it was. She smiled, hoping that, for these children at least, it lasted just as long as it could. The world was a complex and often polarized place, and navigating it was something that … they would have to learn, eventually, but… not right now.

Not right now.


	23. Winding Down and Riling Up

Candace One was angry.

That was probably the understatement of the year, up there with 'If Mom saw what you two were doing, you would be so busted' and 'I'm going to get Mom' or really anything busting-related in general. With the sole exception, of course, being 'You two are so busted', which, although being something Candace said a lot, had yet to come true.

But it would, one day, for sure. The Mysterious Force they hid behind couldn't protect them forever, could it? And one of these days. One of these days.

But that wasn't really the reason she was angry right now. That was the sort of thing she dealt with on a day to day basis, all the time, all her life. She hated it at times, and loved it at others. But most importantly, she could deal with it.

What she was mad about right now, though? Was not something she could deal with. And she was fed up with trying to deal with it anyway, and being forced to deal with it, and having her face rubbed in it over and over.

And she'd won the fights. She'd run into direct conflict with Three, with Four, with Five, and had annihilated them all. Though it might seem strange that she'd been able to pull that off, it only made sense if you thought about it. After all, as Three and Four and Five loved to bring up when shoving their incestuous relationships (or lack of one) down her throat, she was them. Or a version of them, before their dimensions had sheared off into a different path or however that worked.

Either way, Three and Four and Five loved to bring up the fact that she was a young version of them, that they knew all about her, and that they knew what was 'best' for her, and all that nonsense.

What the women had forgotten, though, was that the whole 'past self' thing cut both ways, and it could cut both ways very deeply, apparently.

Candace worried about things. She worried about a lot of things. She knew that her busting habits were putting strain on her relationship with Jeremy. She knew that her personality alone was bad enough to put strain that relationship.

She had a reputation as somewhat of a loony, the crazy insane older sister of Phineas and Ferb who yelled and ran and got beaten up a lot. Making friends with that stigma permanently attached to her was hard . And fitting in was even harder. School had never been particularly difficult academics-wise, but she struggled a lot with it regardless of that fact. No one really wanted to hang out with her. Sure, she had Stacy… and Jenny, on occasion, but that was really it. And some days that stung.

Oh, sure, there were people who would hang out with her. There were always people like that. But they never wanted to be friends, really. They just wanted to stick around because of Phineas and Ferb. Which was another thing she worried about.

Because, really, she often felt like the useless one of the family. What had she done over the course of the last summer? Not anything that Phineas and Ferb couldn't have done themselves, and probably done a better job of it, too. Because the truth was, as much as she didn't fit in with 'normal' people, she didn't fit with her own family either. Her brothers overshadowed her in everything she did. Even when they weren't trying to, they did.

And yeah, sometimes the stuff they built was cool. Even she would admit that - like the time they built giant Skiddley Whiffers, or the that massive sculpture of her head on Mount Rushmore, or that giant skyscraper that completely blown that other girl's brothers' clubhouse out of the freaking water.

But for all that, it still didn't help her any when she was trying to be noticed, to stand out and be extraordinary. It was like she was trying to get people to notice her flashlight when the sun itself was right behind her, so bright that she could have lit herself on fire and still no one would have noticed.

Because no matter what she did, she would always get outshined. Always, always, always. Why was it that when Phineas and Ferb had an idea, everyone was always like "Oh, wow, you guys are really clever!"

And when she came up with something, everyone was always all "What? Did you say something, Candace?"

At the very root, it wasn't fair .

But that, in a surprising twist of events, had turned out to be very useful. Because Three and Four and Five thought that they had their lives together, thought that they had it all under control. But when Candace had dredged up her deep worries and fears, they had crumpled like paper in front of her eyes.

And it had been rather satisfying to see it, if she was being honest. She'd been run over and ignored the entire she'd been here. Everyone assumed that because she was a teenager, that she was unimportant and her opinion on things was worthless. More than that, they saw her as a blank slate, something on which they which they could all paint their own craziness on, to push it off onto her, like some sort of interdimensional scapegoat or something.

She didn't know how long she sat up on that big wooden desk, kicking her heels against it, stewing over everything. All she did know was that until this whole mess was over, until Four's brothers found a way home, she was not going to leave. In here, at least, she wouldn't have deal with all the other Candaces and everything they tried to do to her.

Of course, there was nothing to eat or drink in here, nor was there a place to use the bathroom. There wasn't even a right now, in the heat of her anger, those things seemed small obstacles to her. Logic and reason and all things of that manner had long been defenestrated by now.

And that was probably the reason that, when a knock sounded at the locked office door, she was in no mood for any form of politeness.

"Go away," she snapped instead. "I don't care who you are - just go away ."

"Candace?" A voice came through the door. "What's wrong?"

She only frowned, the scowl on her face darkening even farther. "Go away, Phineas . I don't want to talk to you." He was as insane as the rest of them if he thought that. The only mood she was in was a yelling mood. He could have that, if he wanted.

"Why not?" he asked again.

Candace clenched her fists. This was really getting on her nerves now. "Because I said so, that's why! Now go away!"

"I'm not going away, Candace," he replied. "There's obviously something bothering you, and I can tell that much for sure. Why don't you tell me what it is?"

Candace crossed her arms. "Well, good luck with that, then," she said scornfully. "You can stand out there all day long for all I care."

There was brief cacophony of beeping noises, and then, somehow, she heard the sound of the door latch uncatching as the lock disengaged. She spun around as he stepped inside, shooting him a disdainful glare.

"Or I could come inside," he remarked calmly, shutting the door behind himself. "Now come on, Candace. Tell me - what's bothering you? What's wrong?"

She crossed her arms resolutely, trying not to let on just how much the steam was beginning to build inside her brain again. "Nothing. Now get out ."

Instead, he reached over to the chair in front of the desk and pulled it over to himself, lowering himself into it. "Candace, please," he paused for a second, settling himself farther into the chair. "You can tell me whatever it is - we can figure it out together. It'll be okay - but I can't help if you don't tell me what's the matter."

"I don't want your help ," Candace retorted. "I know what kind of help you offer your sister and I want no part in it - none at all."

"Then I promise I won't try," he replied slowly. "I won't say anything - I'll sit here and listen. Look, Candace, I really just want to know what's bothering you."

Okay, now this was just too much. Candace sprang up from her seat on the desk, starting to see red again. "You want to know?" she spat. "Do youreally ? Fine, then. I'll tell you . Every last bit of it."

Phineas blinked, leaning back slightly in the chair. She hardly even noticed the movement as she launched into speech.

"For starters, why don't I mention how you and your sister and all the rest of them absolutely love to ignore me? How whenever I try to say anything, I get run over and trampled? How you never take my objections to anything seriously because, oh, she's a teeny weeny little kiddy and obviously she's not important enough to devote the half a second that it would take to listen to my opinion!" She saw Phineas starting to open his mouth, but she plunged on without giving him a chance to say whatever he might've been about to say. "Like the night before last, hmm? How you saw nothing at all wrong with where you made me sleep? You didn't stop for a second to think that might be uncomfortable for me?"

"I mean, I did say-"

"I don't care what you said ," she interrupted. "I care what you did - and that's far more important that saying things. But I guess you wouldn't know that would you? Because you've never really paid attention to the stuff you do to me, you know? I guess you just really don't care, do you?"

"What?" Phineas blinked again.

"Oh, don't act like you don't know!" Candace huffed. "Unless you're still the same stupidly blind person you used to be - which I guess you might as well be, for everything that I've seen." She paused for moment, eyeing the look on Phineas' face. "But you know what - if you're really that blind, let me refresh your memory a bit." Phineas opened his mouth again, but she shook her head violently. "I don't want to hear anything ! I have heardenough from you already! Why don't you sit there and tell me if you remember the time a few months ago when you built that stupid car wash? Do you? Whatever - it's enough to say that you did it. And did you notice what happened to me during that time? Do you? Let me tell you what happened." She shuddered slightly at the memory. "While you were all dancing and singing and having a grand old time, I was getting swept up into your machine and pulled all bits and pieces and wrapped around stupid brushes and doused in hot wax and scrubbed with motorized brushes until my skin was raw!"

Phineas grimaced slightly. "I'm sorry that happened to you," he said. "I really am - I'm sure that your-"

"Oh, I'm not done," she snapped. "Not by a long shot. Should I mention that time you trapped me in a giant ball and sent it flying all around town and how sick that made me? Or should I talk about the time you froze me in a solid cube of ice? Or maybe that time you strapped me into that stupid contraption that shoved me into mud and into a vase and tried to burn my face off and chop me up into bits with all the giant spinny blades? Or do you need more evidence than that, hm?"

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I know that when I was a kid I paid less attention to your safety than I probably should have. I-"

"Than you probably should have?! Than you probably should have ?!" Candace's voice skipped up several pitches, straining under the intensity. "That's the understatement of the year! Need I remind you of the times I was struck by lightning ? Buried alive? Blown up? Hit in the face by awatermelon ? You, Phineas, you put me in more danger than any other person on the planet, and you laughed and joked about it constantly." She paused. "And you have the nerve to say you're sorry ."

"I am, though," he tried again. "I mean, you're not my sister specifically , but you're a version of her, and I care about my sister. And I've… I've been through this with her, too. So I do know about these things, and you can take my word that I really do regret those things. And I'm sure your brother, well, he really doesn't know. Talk to him, Candace. Tell him what happens. He'll stop, I know he will."

"No, no he won't," Candace retorted. "I know my brother. He's just as oblivious as you are. Neither of you can see anything unless it's spelled out for in the plainest of letters, and a lot of the time? Not even then ."

"Candace, please." Phineas grimaced. "He can't help what he doesn't know. If you'd just tell him-"

"Why don't you just shut up ?!" she yelled back. "Because you know what? You wanna know something? Do you? For all that my brother ever did to me - and you can rest assured that it's a lot , you still manage to be worse than he is." She scowled. "Because with all your 'oh, I care about you' crap, you still don't realize what you're doing ! You're just like my brother, all of you - all the same! You say you care, you say you want to help, but nobody ever wants to actually do anything about it. Guess it would just be too hard, huh?"

"I really do want to help, Candace, I-"

" I don't want your help! " Candace shouted with such volume that he started slightly in chair. "I know how you all want to help me! And no! I willnot turn to the same disgusting crap that you all want me to! I refuse !" She took a deep breath. "Because that's another thing, you know? Ever since I've gotten here, Three and Four and Six have been doing nothing but pumping me full of their garbage about how all my problems will be magically solved if I just start committing incest , because, oh yeah, that's a reasonable thing to do."

"I'm sure no one-"

" Shut up ! I have heard enough ! You know, for all things I've dealt with over the past summer - all the cliffs, the cacti, the snakes, the scorpions, the spiders, the being dragged across pavement behind a moving vehicle, the mortal danger, the bodily harm and all the pain that came along with it, all this crap about how I need to commit incest - I wish I'd never heard it! I'd rather you do anything to me - anything - than tell me about this junk! I can take those other things - I have for every day of my life. But this? Oh, no. I cannot deal with this!"

"Candace, I understand you-"

"You understand nothing !" She was furious by now. Positively overflowing in rage and anger too long stifled. "You have done nothing but torment me your entire life! Whether you're getting me in trouble for things I didn't deserve - thanks for that, by the way - or you're dangling my dreams in front of my face, only to snatch them away and crush them at the last second, or you're putting me in danger of life and limb, or you're building your stupid, stupid, stupid contraptions purely to make miserable, all you do is mess with me. I can't have a normal life all because of you. I can't do anything because of you." She saw something in Phineas' eyes that she hadn't really expected to see there - it looked almost like… like she was hurting him? Oh well. At this point, she just didn't care. She'd been carrying this around inside her for years now, and these past two days had finally pushed her past her own limits. "All you do is ruin things for me. It's all you've ever done. But you know what? I would rather you do any of things to me than to treat me to your endless drivel about your disgusting relationship with your sister , your rambles about how you supposedly 'care' when you've never done anything to back those words up."

Phineas blinked rapidly multiple times. "C - Candace, look, I'm sorry . I don't know what else to say - it was things I did in the past. But, I mean, ever since my Candace told me about this stuff I've taken every precaution within reason to ensure-"

"Oh, that's nice ," Candace snapped, her voice dripping with disdain. "So you really couldn't give a crap about your sister's well-being until she started dating you? You think that's enough to make up for everything? Do you really think that?" She kicked the desk again, feeling the pain surging up her foot. "What does that say about you, hm? That really you didn't care at all - until it benefited you ?" She stopped and scowled darkly. "That's not care at all, Phineas . That's blackmail . And you know what? It's all I expect from you. Because-"

"C - Candace, please, listen," he held his hands up, his face contorting somewhat. "That's - that's -"

"- you don't really care, do you ?" She clenched her fists and banged one of them down on the desk. "Maybe Seven is right about you. I don't know! How could I? All you've ever done is torment me. And your precious Candace Four, let me tell you something . She was me - but although I willnever be her - I can tell you this : she felt exactly the same way. I know this. Your stupid projects, your stupid speeches, your stupid lies, your stupid face . Everything ." She stamped her foot in all-consuming rage, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, thinking nothing at all. "Maybe Four, maybe Three, maybe Six… maybe all of us would have been better off without you."

Phineas took a breath and looked up at her, his eyes somewhat wider than before. "I - I know you don't mean that." He paused, and stared at her a second. "Right?"

Candace stared back at him. The words 'Of course I do' were on the tip of her tongue, along with perhaps another snarky remark about how he constantly put her through the wringer - physically, mentally, and emotionally - every single day. But something about the look in his eyes killed the response. It died halfway out of her mouth. "Of…" was all that made it out.

"Be honest," Phineas said, his voice almost cracking. "If you really do, you shouldn't - shouldn't bottle it up anymore. It's not healthy."

Candace stamped her foot again, trying to conjure up the all-devouring wrath that had washed through her every limb just moments before. But something had happened inside her, and no matter where she looked, it was gone. "I…" she managed at last.

Phineas said nothing, but the intensity with which he was staring into her soul demanded an answer from her - an answer which she had, but was unwilling to give.

"Candace," he spoke up suddenly. He paused and took a deep breath. "I don't know any better way to say this to you. I'm sorry. I apologize. I - I realize that I'll likely never be able to make it up to you. I know you suffered." He paused, his shoulders shaking slightly. "My own Candace has told me all of this before. And I know that I should have done more then. But - but I can't. Not anymore. It's over. And I just… I don't know, Candace. I'm just… I'm sorry." He stopped and put his face in his hands.

Candace pressed her palms against her temples. "Phineas, I…"

"I know that back then I wasn't nearly the brother I should have been," he said. "I can't fix that. It's over - for me." He looked up at Candace. "And you have no idea how much I regret that. But you, Candace, your brother… he can . You're only fifteen. He's only eleven or twelve. Tell him, Candace. I know I messed up, and I know I can't fix it. But he can. Please, Candace, give him that chance, the one that I missed out on." He paused again, and when he resumed again, his voice was filled with a burning intensity that almost overrode the slight quavering in his pitch. "I care about my sister. As you know, in more ways than one. And you're a version of her. I care about her, Candace, and I care about you - but I suppose that doesn't matter to you. Your brother cares about you. If he's anything like me, he just doesn't see things - not because he doesn't care, but because he doesn't notice. Make him notice, Candace. Give him the chance. He may not be in love with you, but he does love you, and I'm confident of that much."

"I know!" Candace burst in frustration. "I know. I just…." she sighed, and collapsed onto the floor in a heap. "I don't know. He - you - I just can't do anything. He may not mean it, but he ruins everything for me. And I can't bust him because of the stupid Mysterious Force and now Six is telling me that the Force actually wants me to romance him and… I just don't know." She looked up at him forlornly, and noticed that he looked just about the same way that she felt on the inside.

And she really didn't know. What was she supposed to do in a situation like this? She'd never been good at coming out these slumps by herself. Whenever she got really down, it was…

…

...it was Phineas who got her out of them. He was always there for her with these things, as she'd admitted to Six last night. But Phineas wasn't here right now. He couldn't be here, really. Only Phineas Four was here, but judging the wateriness in his own eyes, he was hardly in a state to comfort anyone. That… was a strange thought.

"I'm… sorry," she whispered at last. "I just… I lost my temper. I do love my brother, I just… I lost my temper." It sounded like a feeble excuse even to her own ears, really, but Phineas nodded silently.

"I know." He gave her a small smile. "I've been around my sister enough in the past four decades to know these things."

"I… guess you have," Candace replied, stirring uncomfortably in her seat on the floor.

"Look, Candace," he resumed. "You don't want to hear about my relationship with my Candace. Okay." He nodded. "I'll make sure that no one brings it up to you again. I - I'm sorry I didn't know how upset it was making you before."

Candace returned the nod slowly, beginning to feel pangs of guilt creep into her mind. "I'm sorry too," she returned quietly. "I… really didn't mean those things, I guess. I mean…"

"I know." he held up one hand. "I know. Well, I don't really. But I know of what my Candace has told me from when she was your age. You just feel inconsequential, like you can't make a difference because your brothers are constantly showing you up, stamping you permanently with that reputation as a 'loser'. You feel like your life isn't your own, because even when you're trying to do your own thing, you're still dragged into their inventions one way or another and you have no way to control them or what happens to you." He paused for a moment. "I can't do much from here about that. But what I can do is tell that your brothers aren't doing that on purpose. They don't have your worst interests at heart, despite what it might feel like at the time."

"I know," Candace admitted lamely. "I just… I can't get away from it. No matter what I do, it's always there, chasing after me. And it always wins, too. And it's been that way all of my life, too."

Phineas shook his head and blinked. "There's nothing I can do about that, I'm afraid. It's - it's something you'll have to take up with your own brothers."

"I guess so." She squirmed in place again. "I really am sorry. I… I don't know what got into me."

"It's - it's better that you got it all out anyway," he replied slowly. "And I'd rather that you took it out on me than anyone else."

Candace blinked, remembering the the looks on Five's and Three's and Four's faces when she'd gotten through with them. "Yeah."

"I - I'm not going to lie to you," he said suddenly. "I know that I was dismissive of you before. I - I guess I sort of thought of you as sort of a child. That - that's not true, is it?"

Once again, Candace hesitated before the obvious answer. It would be so easy to just say 'no, it isn't true' and to insist that they treat her as an equal. But… the answer just wouldn't come like that. "Yes," she said instead. "It's true, Phineas, I… I'm fifteen , I… just want to be home . Home with my family, my brothers, my parents, my friends." She paused, and her lower lip trembled. "For - for the last month and a half, I haven't even been able to talk to them, you know? Not really, anyway. I just… I want to go back, to have my life back - my life where, well, where I get beaten into a pulp every other day." She blinked. "I can hardly remember the last real conversation I had with my brothers - my parents - with anyone."

Phineas nodded. "I know, Candace. You're - you're not alone, you know? Everyone wants that. And though some of them do a better job of hiding it than others, there's not a single one of you here who doesn't feel the same way."

"I guess." Candace sighed dejectedly. "I don't even why I try anymore, really."

Phineas got up and sat down on the floor next to her. "I'll tell you why," he remarked. "You try because you're Candace Gertrude Flynn. And despite everything you listed off to me - things that I know are true - your brothers do care about you. And you about them. And you've got determination like no other person on the planet, even in the face of seemingly endless failure, something that your brother, if he's anything like me, has alwaysadmired you for." He paused. "No, you're not perfect. No one is, Candace. But sometimes, you can't focus on your failures . If you do that, you'll never take note of all the times you succeeded ."

"Like I've ever done anything half so amazing as you," she replied. "Life belongs to you guys. Nature bends over backwards for you. Whatever you want to do, you succeed." She let out a long breath. "What have I ever done?"

"Well, let's see," he said. "You're fifteen now. If my memory serves me correctly, that was the year you became Queen of Mars, no? The year you took a spacewalk purely to save our lives. The year you overcame a deepset fear and saved the world . The year you traveled outside of time and space itself and still held yourself together. Not a lot of people could do those things, you know?"

"I mean… I guess so," she relented at last.

"You did do those things, no?"

"I mean… I did , yeah."

He smiled down at her. "Then you know what I mean." He paused for a second. "I'll let you in on a secret, Candace. Your brother looks up to you in more ways than you can possibly imagine. When I was eleven and my Candace was fifteen, I'd still not yet really started… moving in the direction we eventually took. But that didn't change anything about that . I have always looked up to her. She's my older sister - the best one I could've ever asked for."

"Why would Phineas ever look up to me?" The very notion sounded ridiculous to Candace's brain. Her brothers were… they were amazing. The very epitomes of brilliance, in more ways that she could begin to count. What could they possibly see in her that was worth looking up to her for? Especially when the rest of the world looked down its nose at her?

But Phineas shook his head. "He's your brother, Candace. I'll let him explain it to you. But you can rest assured that it's there. I know it's there, because he's a version of me. And I'd do anything for my sister, and I know he'd do anything for you, too."

"I... I know." She hesitated, tracing a meaningless pattern on the floor with her finger.

Of all all the things she worried about, perhaps this was one most important. Because at some level, did she really deserve them? They would do anything for her, if they knew she needed their help. That was what was so scary about this whole situation - because she knew that, based on her experiences with spoons and capri pants and tigers and all that stuff, that her brothers actually couldn't help her.

And if they couldn't, then who could?

Another version of them from a different dimension, apparently. It was weird how these things worked somehow.

She turned back to face Phineas. "I… really am sorry, though. I… I hurt you, didn't I?"

He stared up at the roof for a moment. "I won't deny it," he finally admitted. "But I knew you didn't mean it. And you needed those things off your chest." He turned back to her. "And it does feel better now, doesn't it?"

She nodded, and the corners of her mouth turned upwards. "Yeah."

"Good." He shook his head. "That's good." He drummed his fingers on the floor idly for a second. "Look, I… should probably get back to work soon. There's a lot to do if I'm to be able to get you home soon. Are you okay now?"

"Not… really?" She shrugged. "I'll manage, I guess."

"If you say so," he replied. "Also, you should apologize to my Candace. She… you did hurt her too. And I know you didn't mean it, but the deepest cuts are often the ones we make on accident."

"And Three and Five," she murmured under her breath. "Yeah, I guess so."

"And in turn," he continued. "I'll make sure that no one brings up me and my sister again, and that your ideas and opinions are treated with as much validity as anyone else's. Does that - does that sound like a deal?"

Candace smiled slightly. "Yeah."

Phineas smiled back, nodding. "It's a deal, then." He patted her on the shoulder as he stood up. "You're doing just fine. And no matter what choices you make in your life, I'm sure they'll be the best ones for you. Just… don't forget that I - your brother - cares about you."

"I won't," she mumbled almost inaudibly as he walked out of the office room. "I don't think I could."

She shook her head and sighed long and loud.

This was just too much to take, really. Phineas… well, he was Phineas, through and through. She knew that what she had said to him had been wrong in every way, shape, and form. She knew it had to have really bothered and upset him, given that he'd let it affect him in a manner she could see. She could hardly remember a time when her own brother was that upset. There was no doubt, then, that - in his own twisted way - he reallydid care about Candace Four.

She shuddered again, remembering that she was going to have to deal with that in her own brother once she got home again, which was… not something she was looking forwards to.

But even all that aside, Candace was thankful for her brothers. Phineas was her brother, and that was something that would never change. And despite all the things she'd mentioned, things that were true enough, she still loved him.

Not, of course, in the repulsive way that Candace Four apparently loved Phineas Four. That was a given, obviously. Nevertheless, that didn't change the fact that she did love him. She'd saved him from falling into the Metropolitan Ovular Access Trench, giving up the perfect busting opportunity for that. It wasn't really something she would do for many other people. Busting was her call in life, her… life goal, really. And sure, if Phineas had gotten himself hurt, or worse, her mother would not have been likely to want to listen to any evidence she had against him anyway, but she had hardly been thinking about that at the time - it had still been a perfect chance in her mind, a golden opportunity that she had thrown away. And not many things could inspire her to willingly do something like that..

But her little brother being in trouble was definitely one of them.

Candace One wasn't angry anymore. The truth was… she was scared. As she'd told Phineas, it had indeed been a month and a half since she'd really seen her brothers or her friends or any member of her family, really. Time loops were nasty like that.

And once again, she was completely dependent on her brothers to set everything in the universe straight. Not her brothers specifically, but adult versions of them from another dimension entirely. It was funny how that worked sometimes. And while Phineas and Ferb had never failed to figure this sort of stuff out before… what if they did?

What if they couldn't ever open a portal home? Would she be forced to live here, finishing growing up alongside her future children? Would Candace Four and her brother have to take over as surrogate parents because she was trapped forever in a dimension in which she did not belong?

The idea was one shockingly unpleasant to contemplate. But, again, what could she do about it? What had she ever been able to do about these things? Nothing. Nothing at all.

And he'd said that her brothers 'looked up to her'. Yeah, that was a likely story. Because sitting around doing nothing except growing paranoid while the Phineas and Ferb of this dimension tried to get her home was definitely noble and admirable. For sure.

But really, such was life. Why did she try anymore? The immediate answer that sprang to mind was 'busting', except… that answer didn't really satisfy her as much as it once had.

So then, really… she didn't know.

Like so many other things in her life, she just didn't know.

* * *

Human feelings were often irrational, and they provided a major hindrance in resolving problems.

Logical arguments could be debunked. Logical objections could be taken away. If a car salesman refused to sell you his car because you possessed one hundred dollars less than the price he asked for it, that problem could be solved if you suddenly acquired one hundred dollars. In an example slightly closer to home, if Candace Flynn's objections to her brothers' inventions had been just because of them being dangerous to their and everyone's safety, then adequate safety precautions could have been taken to ensure nothing went wrong, and it would have at least reduced her objections because the dangers would be reduced. Or, for an even more logical example, when Candace had struggled with her math homework at school, Phineas' assistance and mathematical knowledge had been enough to help her solve those problems and never look back. Because there was one right answer, and it couldn't be disputed.

Feelings didn't work that way, though. That had been shown to be true when Phineas' desire to make her his girlfriend persevered despite all the logical arguments that should have convinced him not to do it, and when Candace herself threw all logic to the wind in accepting, first to give it a try, and then finally to commit herself fully to live out the rest of her life with her little brother at her side. But another type of feelings, insecurities, also worked that same way. And when it came to those feelings, Candace knew that she and other people in her life – mostly Phineas – could keep arguing about why they didn't make any sense until their throats were sore. They could make her feel better, reassure her, and minimize the looming insecurities in the back of her mind. But they rarely disappeared altogether. And on days like this, when old wounds were ripped open, they came back in full force.

Candace Four sat down on a chair in the basement, still unable to comprehend how she could have gone from the self-confident woman she'd started the day as to the mental wreck she felt herself to be right now, the woman who had been utterly unable to best her teenaged self in an argument. But how could she? Because little Candace, kid Candace, tiny Candace or whatever they wanted to call her had still been old and clever enough to hit her right where it hurt.

She couldn't compare to her brother, and she didn't deserve him. Those were two facts that had loomed over her life for years now – the first had done so pretty much from the day Phineas headed into Kindergarten and first started building things (things that were better than whatever she could accomplish even then), and the second had probably been rooted in her subconscious for a while but only really came out when she'd fallen in love with him. But it didn't matter when those truths first emerged – what mattered was that they'd shaped her life. No matter how kind she would be to Phineas, how closely she could cling onto him, and no matter how much effort she'd put into doing things for him, he would always be better than her. It was always him helping her out, and her failing miserably.

In theory, that shouldn't have to be enough to make her feel so despaired. Because no matter how strange that thought might be, Phineas loved her the way she was. And even if she couldn't ever be as great as him, she at least had a home with him, a loving and romantic relationship complete with two children, which she wouldn't trade for anything in the world. And the concerns Candace One had raised weren't anything new – she had worried time and time again about how she just wasn't good enough for him, and Phineas had told her that she was , that he loved her, and that he would never, ever leave her. Ferb, too, had never given any indication that he thought less of his sister because of her many shortcomings. He might not always have as much patience with and understanding for them as well as Phineas could, but he cared for her nonetheless, she was sure of that.

But no matter how many times Phineas squashed that feeling that she was lesser than him, that her place was on the sidelines, it lingered – only to resurface in moments when she needed it the least. Such as today, and right now. Because no matter how well she knew that Phineas would comfort her and tell her otherwise, and that he would never leave her over this… she also knew that her teenaged self was right. What was she really bringing to the table in this relationship? What was she doing that Phineas himself couldn't have done? Nothing. Throughout all of her life, whether it was something major as the emotional flaws that made her doubt who she was, or something small like Phineas fixing the water faucet a couple of weeks ago, she relied on her lover to do all the work to fix everything. Sure, she'd done a couple of nice things for him, and she knew this was much better than the busting Candace One still pursued because at least she wasn't actively thwarting him anymore, but it was still a relationship of all take and no give – or, from his side, all give and no take.

And even if she felt in her heart that Phineas would never leave her, and she felt that they both loved each other and would do anything for each other, she also felt that this… this completely lopsided relationship just couldn't be healthy, could it?

She wished he was here right now to talk her through this, so that she didn't have to do this herself. But he'd gone to chase after her teenaged self after their argument – as always, her gallant brother had come to her rescue there. A smile emerged on Candace Four's face almost despite herself. Phineas had come to her aid without knowledge of what One had said, almost unthinkingly, and even if she didn't have many chances or capacities to return the favor she knew she would do so in a heartbeat if the situation called for it. She wouldn't waste time on her pride and her spite, the way Candace One would, because she knew how important Phineas was to her.

Maybe their relationship was healthy, then. It was healthy as long as they loved each other, even if it was lopsided, because – like Candace Three had pointed out more times than she could count – they were a crazy person anyway, and Phineas loved them regardless. (Well, Three was determined that she was the only one who was really crazy, but Four knew that statement applied to herself as well.) And maybe the only unhealthy part was that Four was so worried about it, that she couldn't relax and couldn't accept Phineas' displays of affection for what they were without the need to do something back so that she'd be worthy.

And maybe not belonging in this family wasn't so much of an issue. Because, sure, Ferb and Phineas could do everything and she was the only one out of their generation who couldn't, but neither of their parents were inventors, right? (Well, her biological father was an inventor, but from what little she knew of him he had never been on Phineas and Ferb's or even Xavier's level.) And out of the kids, Xavier and Fred built stuff, but Amanda didn't (well, she helped them out, but she never built inventions in her own right if the others weren't there), nor did Angie or Milly (Right? She actually wasn't sure about that, come to think of it). So maybe it was okay? Because if her daughter wasn't an amazing inventor like Phineas, thenshe didn't have to be an amazing inventor like Phineas, right? And Amanda certainly never made a fuss about it – she just wasn't the type. Regardless of the fact that this basically meant she was having to disparage her own daughter in her mind just to make herself feel better, that argument made sense.

But even that didn't hold up. Because as Candace One had reminded her, there was a version of herself that did belong with her brothers. And who did have children who could apparently both invent, and that meant that on at least that measuring stick, Four fell short. She could have been a great inventor like Three was, but apparently she just wasn't good enough. Three was a nice woman and a great potential friend, but Candace just knew that she'd need at least a week to recover once they had parted again.

You know what Three's life is like , a patient voice in her head reminded her. Withdrawals, the Mysterious Force, and all that craziness. You don't want that for yourself, do you? You are a lawyer, and that's your job. That's the job of the Candace Flynn that Phineas Flynn Four loves with all his heart. You told little Ca- Candace One that you were over your argument with Three, now prove it.

I… I… don't want her life. And I know Phineas loves me. I know all that, all those logical reasons to stop worrying about this, but…

But she just kept feeling insecure.

Sure, she knew that Three was far from perfect, the way she'd first assumed she was in the non-dimension. Three also had issues, and Candace supposed she could even understand some of those. That feeling that she was crazy and that this whole life she lead with her brother was insane was a feeling she'd herself had many times before, even if she hadn't let it dominate her life in the way that it apparently had for Three. And she could also understand that, given that Three couldn't go for a day without inventing, that the Mysterious Force had plagued her so much longer than it had plagued Candace herself, and that she was adding her relationship with her own brother to the mix, she had a firm view of herself as not being normal and not fitting in with anyone but her own younger brothers. But at least she could fit in with her brothers, whereas Four was just caught between two stools and had nobody. And at least she'd never tried to point a finger at anyone around her to cover up her own flaws.

It was time to face the facts. Yes, Candace Three was possibly just as insecure as she was. But Candace Three took all that out on herself, to the point that it didn't even occur to her to undermine Four's position in order to feel better about herself. Whereas conversely, Four had been doing just that about Three from the start. Candace Three might not be any better at being Candace …

…but she was a better person .

And she was coming into the room right now.


	24. Dawn of the First Day

Candace Four braced herself. She was so not up to facing Three right now, not after her insecurities about the other woman had just been given fresh life by the events of the last couple of minutes. She needed to keep her at bay until she could put those insecurities back where they belonged at the back of her mind, and until she could present that same friendly, casual face again that she had managed to present during their conversation yesterday. She felt like she'd made some progress then convincing Three that she wasn't the only one with problems, and she wasn't about to sacrifice it because of her own problems.

(She wasn't sure how the fact that she had problems would help convince another version of herself that she didn't have problems, but somehow that thought felt logical in her mind. Honestly, by now it was fair to say that every single one of their group of eight was crazy.)

But as she looked up at Three's face, willing away her discomfort and the tears that were almost pressing into her tear ducts, she was startled at what she saw. Candace Three looked deeply distraught. Her face was all flushed up and her eyes looked puffy, and she simply stared into the distance, sometimes glancing straight at Four but never ceasing to look like she'd just seen a ghost. Four had no idea what could be wrong. Had she had a nightmare? Or had Phineas somehow come up with a machine that could access other dimensions – maybe rebuilding the mind transmitter for it – and had Three just discovered that something terrible had happened to her brother and her kids?

Before she could get very far in thinking all those things, Three came to a halt right next to her. "Mind if I?" she whispered, in an oddly hoarse voice.

Four shook her head. "Sit down" she replied, noticing that her voice was just as hoarse. It was easy to tell, what with them both having more or less the same voice, even despite the distortion that showed up because of her hearing her own voice from a different direction. That was unusual. She knew her own hoarse voice was because of her argument with teenaged Candace, so why…

Candace Four grimaced. Of course. One's words came back to her, thrown out so carelessly at the time – "At least Three got what was coming to her". How many more Candaces had that innocent-looking teenage girl attacked over the course of this morning? How many more old secrets had she managed to use against her older selves? And was it wrong to hope that Five had been one of her victims?

Well, it didn't matter. Three had clearly been attacked by their kid self, and she was currently stammering for attention. "I need to…" she began, then she stopped. "I want to… I want to ask you for help. I… I need someone to talk to."

Four nodded. "Did little Candace do this to you?"

Three looked at her in complete astonishment for a moment, and then she nodded. "Yeah. She came up to me this morning, I tried to help her… and she got into her past, my past, our past, and told me things that…" She shook her head. "I can't deal with them, not right now."

Candace Four put a hand on her counterpart's shoulder, trying not to let her own discomfort show. She needed to hold herself together right now – Candace Three needed her help, and if she wanted to do anything back to the woman who really hadn't deserved the way Four had looked at her too many times, the chance for that was now. "What did she tell you?"

Her other self sighed, swallowing a few times. She took a piece of paper from a stack on the table right next to them and fiddled with it for a few moments before turning back to Four and ostensibly regaining her composure.

"That I brought it all on myself" she whispered. "Everything. The craziness, the fact that I'll never fit in with the rest of the world. You… you were right about me. I never realized it before, but I have been almost possessive of my own status as the crazy one. I thought I tried to fight it, that I tried to be normal, but did I really? Because I drove Jeremy Johnson away. I hooked up with my brother, and of course I love him, but little Candace said that I ended up with him just because my own brother was the only one who could tolerate me, and that's not true! I love him, I know I do! But she's right that I could have been normal, if I'd just tried harder – but I didn't, and when I tried I did so in a crazy way that drove everyone away because apparently even my attempts to be normal are crazy. I could have had a normal life, if I just…" She shook her head. "I alienated everyone around me from me. Except Phineas, and I wouldn't miss him for the world, but what kind of person am I if only someone that impossibly good and pure will stick around?"

Four blinked. That was… that was not something she'd seen coming. Even if given Three's previously expressed insecurities, she probably should have. "All right" she replied. "That… that's not all true, okay? You know that. That's just Candace One talking. Heck, you can't even both blame yourself for not doing enough to be normal, and then say that you failed to do so because you're just too crazy. It doesn't work that way. If you are too crazy for all that to have ever worked, then you can still feel bad because of it but there would be nothing else you could have done, and at some point you're going to have to accept that you're doing your best and let go of your anxiety, right? And secondly – Phineas isn't the only one who stuck with you, did he? I mean, you mentioned Ferb before, and you've got kids, and I'm sure there are others who…"

"Of course there are" Candace Three cut in. "Phineas, Ferb, Xavier and Amanda, Isabella, Stacy, our parents… yeah, they stuck with me. And I'm grateful for that. But they're the only ones. And even when it comes to them, I get weird looks sometimes, because I'm just not normal . Even our house isn't normal. I know you told me about the fact that your Phineas has got a separate bed because you're worried about visitors, but that still means you're allowing people inside at all! Phineas and I have virtual doors for every passageway, because the risk of it all crashing down on us would just be too great. I mean, I want this relationship because I love him, I – I know I do, but… Candace One is right. I should have done more, but I didn't do more. Because apparently I'm just too pathetic to do more."

Candace Four remained silent for a while, mulling that over. "Okay, so you said that you love Phineas" she replied. "Are you sure about that? That you love Phineas, and he loves you? In that romantic, soulmate way?"

"Well, I…" Candace Three took a deep breath. "I thought I did. No, I know I do." She remained silent for a while, as if debating with herself whether to continue – perhaps whether to trust a version of herself with her deepest insecurities right when she'd just been told off by another version of herself? "But some small voice at the back of my mind is wondering right now whether One isn't right and the reason all this started was because I really couldn't find a place anywhere else, simply because I'm that pathetically crazy."

She looked away from Four, possibly expecting some kind of rejection. Yeah, right. As if Four was ever going to chide one of her counterparts for feeling something she'd felt so many times before. (Well, maybe Five or Seven, but they didn't count.) "Let me put it differently" she said gently. "If you lost Phineas, as a romantic partner I mean – if he just stood up one day and decided that he didn't want to be your lover anymore and walked out – how would you feel?"

Three snorted. "Like a steamroller had rolled over my heart," she replied. "And that's putting it mildly. I… that would be the worst thing that could ever happen to me, short of losing him or the kids altogether."

"And if Phineas lost you, in that way?" Four continued. "How would he feel?"

There was a brief hesitation, but when the answer came she knew Three was convinced. "The same way" she replied. "I've seen how he acts when I get in trouble, and how unhappy it made him back in the day when I tried to reject his feelings. He feels the same way."

Candace Four smiled. "So if you two love each other that much, then you're committed to be together, right?" Three gave her a tentative nod. "And once you accept that, then you're always going to have craziness in your life. That's just how having a secret relationship with your brother works . But you can't do anything to change it, because it's built on foundations that you don't want to change. And if that's true, why would you worry about it? Why would you crave a life of normalcy with normal friends and normal hobbies when you know that the one thing you would have to give up for that is something you'd never want to give up?"

Three's face remained unreadable for a while. Then she shook her head and smiled faintly. "You're so much better at this than I am" she murmured, almost too soft for Four to catch.

The older Candace chuckled. "Yeah, right. It only looks that way because you haven't had the chance to look inside my mind, and if you took one step in there you'd probably run away screaming. And I wouldn't be able to blame you." She shook her head. "Candace One rattled me pretty badly, too."

Her counterpart looked up at her, her facial features betraying slight curiosity. Well, that was probably a good thing, as it meant that she was no longer stewing in her own misery so deeply that she couldn't think about others anymore. "How?"

Four shrugged. "Technically, she didn't even tell me anything I didn't know yet" she replied. "She just… reaffirmed it? I guess? That I don't fit in with my own family, and that I never will."

Three frowned. "What in the world gave you that idea?"

In response, Candace Four reached out her hand and let the small paper airplane Three had just created unthinkingly during their conversation land on it – a fully functional paper airplane complete with engines and windows (though no licorice dispenser, or even something that looked remotely like it – she supposed that Three would have needed licorice for that.) "Does this ring a bell?"

Candace Three shook her head. "No, it's an airplane – modeled after the latest Airbus A3470 class air jet. It doesn't have a bell inside, but I could make one if you wanted me to…"

Four wondered whether her counterpart was joking, whether she was still distracted due to what had just happened, or whether the gift of inventing had somehow granted her Phineas' occasional incredible absentmindedness. It was probably a combination of the three, aided by the chasm that appeared to exist between their different mindsets sometimes. "The invention, Three. You built it, Phineas and Ferb could build it, but I could never build it. If I tried to build a paper airplane that actually worked, without Phineas and Ferb's help, it would be a lot simpler and bulkier than that one, it would take me days to put together, and even then it wouldn't fly for more than ten minutes, at most ."

The younger Candace sighed. "Candace…" she said. "You've said you don't want my life before. You told me that you were some kinda lawyer or something and I'd think it's pretty obvious that inventing all the time isn't the ideal version of that – and if you somehow still think that, you should really take a look inside my mind some day." She snorted. "And you definitely don't need to think that Phineas loves you any less because you can't do all those things. I've seen the way he looks at you, Four."

"I guess you're right" Candace Four replied, sighing. Was it sad that she was beginning to trust Three more on that than her own eyes and experience of the past twenty years? "But it's not even about that, not anymore. It's just… I don't fit in. You might have all these problems and I don't want to say they're not there, but at least you can share them with your brothers because they have to go through the same things, or at least for as far as it comes to building stuff and the things that does with your mind. I don't have any of that, because I'm the outsider. The one Flynn-Fletcher who can't build stuff because she's just plain stupid ." She noticed that Three was opening her mouth again and held up her hand to stop it. "I know, I know. Amanda doesn't do this stuff either, not in the way Xavier does. But I never claimed that this feeling was entirely rational." She shook her head. "You fit in with your brothers, your kids can invent the way you guys all can in your dimension, and… well, you've got a home where you belong. And I guess I just feel jealous of you for that."

Three shook her head in disbelief. "Jealous" she repeated. "If anyone had told me before this week that someone could be jealous of me, I would have laughed in their faces. Four, you're your brothers' sister. I don't know how much of your background is similar to mine, but I know I did all sorts of things with them even before I recovered my inventing skills. Things which Phineas somehow admires me for, like becoming Queen of Mars, or wrestling an alligator, or winning fifty patches in one day to become a Fireside Girl, or overcoming my fear of spiders… does any of that sound familiar?" Four reluctantly nodded. "There, you see? And I saw you at work helping me in the non-dimension. You're not as incapable as you claim to be, Four. Maybe you don't quite have that inventing gene the same way Phineas and Ferb and I do, or maybe it's just latent and you really are unable to access it. I… I still have a hard time believing that, by the way, but if you say so, I guess. But you have other interests, and you don't need to be an inventor if that's not what you want. Carpe diem, right? Do whatever you dream. And, heck, at least not having all those repressed urges to build meant you never had anything to channel into that jealousy which I channeled it into. You… you don't want to know what my childhood was like during my busting phase, Candace. Trust me."

Candace Four looked at her in surprise. "What're you talking about? We talked about busting before, and the way I figured it we've all been in a phase where we tried to bust our brothers. Well, except Two, because she was focused on protecting them from this Doofen-something guy. And Six was busting rebels in general and not our brothers per se, and I have no idea what Kevin was up to. But between the two of us, our busting phases couldn't have been that different."

Three snorted. "Did you ever waste Phineas' own birthday trying to find something to bust him for, without even thinking about what present you should buy for him?"

"Actually, yes?" Four replied. "I think I did. I ended up getting him another present, though… I don't remember what it was, but I think got ahold of it by accident somehow. We'd have to ask One – if we could manage it – but I don't think that's really different from what I lived through."

"Okay, so what about that time Phineas almost fell off a bridge after collecting a disk of busting evidence for me from a giant robot, and I went up there to save him but the disk was also…"

"…was also in trouble so we stood there for a while actually deliberating which of the two we should save," Four finished. "Yeah, I know. I've been there, Three."

Three shook her head. "That's… that can't be true. How could you still bust in the same way I did? The reason I started to bust was because all my inventions kept disappearing through the Mysterious Force before I ever got the chance to use them, but Phineas was allowed to keep his. I thought it wasn't fair, and so I was determined that if I couldn't use the things I built, he shouldn't be allowed to use the things he built. It… it was appalling. What kind of reason is that to ruin your brothers' main joy in life? I can't believe he still stuck around after all that – that he allowed me back in as soon as I was ready to resume inventing, and that he even fell in love with me."

Candace shrugged. "That doesn't sound like too different an experience from mine" she replied. "I mean, what's the difference really between wanting your brothers in trouble because you can't enjoy the things you've built and they can, or because you can't do the things they can build? Because that was my main reason – well, maybe when I started I thought I was doing the right thing, but didn't take to long till I was mostly busting them out of spite. There was maybe some sense of worry involved, and the desire to just prove to Mom that I wasn't crazy, but if I'm not trying to justify it to myself, far too many of my busting urges were born out of spite and a desire to control the chaotic world around me."

She smiled softly. "We're not so different, you and I. The main difference is that you apparently got over it. I mean, if you think your life is crazier than mine, why haven't you ruined it for me? Shown me up at some point? I mean, you've got all these amazing inventing skills, surely you can put them to use to ruin my reputation with Phineas or something like that."

"Why in the world would I do that?" Three replied, looking genuinely puzzled. "You're… well, I suppose that in this place, you're the closest thing I have to a friend."

Candace Four nodded slowly. "Yeah, I thought the same thing. But it hasn't kept me from envying you, or kind of hoping you would fail back in the other dimension. And I know that there's not really a reason for me to envy you because you can do things that I don't even want to do, but I still feel insecure about the fact that Phineas knows there's a Candace out there that can do all these things, whereas I can't. And I still envy you for it. Doesn't that say enough about how messed up I am – how much better you are than I am?"

Three shook her head. "If you really think that, that I'm somehow better than you for not feeling spite against you, then I can only point out the same thing you told me last night." Four frowned. "When I told you what I did to Jeremy? You pointed out that I didn't go through with it, and that you could have done the same thing under the right circumstances. And I guess that's true, really. We're both capable of feeling spite, and deep down we want others to be less so that we look better – like how I felt relieved at meeting a version of us that was as crazy as Seven was, before finding out that she's me. And I know I spend so much of my life being absolutely terrified of what I know I have the potential to do."

"Wait, what?" Candace Four frowned. "What're you talking about?"

"Long story, and very… painful to remember" Three replied, and as Four put a hand on the other woman's shoulder she could tell she was shivering. "You should ask your brother if you want to hear everything. Anyway, I know I'm capable of lots of awful things. And when it came to busting, I actually unleashed some of them – as did you, apparently. And the results were far from pretty." She sighed. "But the important thing is, busting stopped. Jeremy… wasn't brainwashed. You did stand up for me, and you haven't done a thing to hurt me no matter how you feel. That's… that's progress, isn't it? We may be messed up, but we're trying to overcome it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough…" She froze up a little again. "But then I wouldn't have wanted to try that way, because I know that Phineas and my relationship with him is the best guarantee for my sanity that I have ever had."

"Told you so" Four murmured. "And even if I'm never going to be able to live up to that urge that says I should be as good as my brothers, or at least as good as any other version of me…"

"…then you should remember that I'm not likely to ever get over any of my insecurities either" Three finished. "We're Candace Flynn. Our insecurities lessen, but they never go away entirely. So maybe you're right, Four. Maybe we're just as weird in the end."

Candace smiled, and hesitated before she replied. "You… you're just saying that to cheer me up, right? You don't actually believe that."

"Not for a second."

Four snorted. "Good. Because you just wouldn't be the same without your constant pride in being the craziest one out of all of us."

Three shook her head, but then she shrugged. "Maybe" she replied. "You know, why do I have the feeling that we've been through this before?"

"Maybe because once isn't enough for our thick skulls" Four proposed. "That seems to be the way it's been in the past, for me at least."

"Yeah, fair enough." Three turned to her counterpart and gave her a smile. "You know, no matter what One or anyone else says, I know I'm happy with my life. And I'm not going to let her or anyone else turn me against myself, or Phineas, or you." She stuck out her hand. "Friends?"

"Friends" Four agreed, reaching out and shaking her counterpart's hand. "Whoa, shaking hands with myself is… kind of strange."

Three snorted. "Well, if you want to claim to be anywhere near as crazy as me, you'd better get used to it" she said teasingly. "Just be glad you didn't see that alien planet where every citizen looked like me. Even Phineas was weirded out by that one. Gotta love shapeshifting."

Four nodded, and then an impulse entered her brain. Before she even really thought about it she reached out and pulled a surprised Candace Three towards her, changing the handshake into a hug. Three's body felt stiff and the expression on her face was utterly flabbergasted –Four hadn't really thought she could look like that before. "What are you doing ?"

"Getting used to the craziness?" Four said, grinning. "Come on, Three. I hug my parents and the kids all the time. It's no big deal."

Three smiled faintly. "You know, I guess that there are areas in which you're weirder than I am" she replied. "I don't think I ever would have thought of hugging another version of myself."

"Get used to it" Four replied, pulling loose and leaning backwards. "It happens when you travel through dimensions and bond with people you know in another universe. At least I didn't kiss you like I did with Five's Phineas – not that that would be necessary, as my Phineas is right here." She gave her brother a look. "How long have you been standing there?"

Phineas stepped away from the doorway that lead to the staircase. "For a minute or two" he admitted. "Candace, you should have told me that you were having issues resenting Three's ability to invent. You know I'd never let that come between us, and you know that I'll talk to you about whatever bothers you, no matter what."

Candace sighed. "I know, I know. I just wasn't ready yet the first night when we just got here and I had to explain all those other things to you. I wanted to tell you last night when we went to bed so that we could talk about it in private, but you didn't come home then and I figured that it wasn't important enough to distract you from your work over it. I was definitely going to tell you tonight, though."

" Anything that bothers you is important to me" Phineas repeated. "And given what happened between you and Candace One just now, it's clearly important to you, too. I… I'm sorry I didn't make it last night, but I promise I'll be there tonight. I don't want to neglect our relationship over this. You're the most important person in my life, Candace, and the fact that you're not quite on Ferb and my level of inventing skills – even if you shouldn't discount your own abilities altogether – doesn't change anything about that." He looked down to the ground, and Candace Four got the unusual feeling that her brother was embarrassed. It had happened before, of course, especially when he'd missed dates or other social cues because of his tendency to put inventing before everything and because of his obliviousness, but it was still weird to see. "Speaking of Candace One, by the way, I talked to her just now. She has some things to say to you. To both of you, actually."

Candace Four tensed, and she exchanged a quick glance with Three, who looked just as tense as she was. She knew Phineas always saw the best in people and it was entirely possible that he'd made her come around, but given how much of a spitfire One had been earlier on Four wasn't ruling out the idea that One would turn out to be far more obstructive than Phineas had hoped and would eventually resort to throwing the same insults at their heads again. Well, at least they were ready for it this time. And she had Three, who could support her – and vice-versa, of course. And she had Phineas. So, really, was there anything she needed to worry about?

There wasn't. Not rationally speaking, at least. But as Candace had established for herself when she got to the basement after being rattled by One the first time, very little about her feelings was ever rational.

Her younger counterpart walked into the room. She looked a lot more… solemn than she had before, and it suddenly occurred to Four what a strange sight the two of them must present to her. Two adult women, clearly being afraid of a teenage girl. (At least it looked more legitimate than the fears she'd always had over little Suzy.) Oddly enough, it really looked like it was affecting One as well, who was blushing. Four wondered what it would be like to be standing there, having just hurt two people so deeply, and then receiving a pep talk from Phineas and realizing how wrong that decision had been, only to come back and see just how much your words had affected those people?

Actually, she didn't have to wonder about that. She'd been there more than once. And if she could guess anything about Three's life by now, the other woman probably felt the exact same way.

"I…" Candace One began, and then she hesitated and shot a brief look towards Phineas, who was standing at the sidelines and gave her an encouraging smile. She cleared her throat. "Look, I… I shouldn't have done that, okay? Yelled at you guys like that. And I… I'm sorry. For the things I said. To both of you."

Once more, Four glanced over at Three and nodded, but the other woman beat her to the punch when it came to speaking up, even if it was in a low and kind of hoarse voice. "Apology accepted."

Four could only chime in with that – and for once, she didn't really mind that that was all she could do. "Same here."

Candace One attempted a smile, but it didn't come out looking very well. "Thank you" she replied. "I know I shouldn't have said all those hurtful things, but I felt like you guys were always ignoring me and trying to push me around. Because I guess that you meant well?" She looked back at Phineas and shuddered. "But it just feels so absolutely crazy to me, and I really don't want to hear about how you think it's inevitable or anything like that. 'Cause I love Jeremy Johnson, and even though I do love Phineas and Ferb I don't want to see either of them in that light. So could you guys just… stop? Okay?"

Four blinked and looked over at Phineas, who was giving them a nod. "Well, okay, I guess? I didn't…" She couldn't exactly say that she didn't know it bothered her teenaged counterpart so much, or that she didn't understand why, because then she'd be lying. She had known that perfectly well. "I guess I didn't think as much as I should've about how disturbed you would be. I mean, it's so natural to me, and to Three too."

One raised an eyebrow. "Well, unlike Six, you guys were born and raised as Phineas' siblings" she pointed out. "And you've told me – repeatedly – that I'm your younger self, so most of the things I've lived through are things that you have also lived through. So shouldn't you have known that it wasn't that natural for me ?" She shook her head. "But I guess that still didn't justify me yelling at you like that, and I guess that it's… okay - as long as you don't bring up your relationship with me again, because no matter how natural it might be to you, I really don't want to hear about it."

"All right" Three replied tentatively. "If that's what you want…"

"Yes, that is what I want" One replied, boldly at first but then releasing some of that impetuousness and slipping back into the calm, almost nervous state she'd been in since entering the room. "I mean, I might be fifteen years old, but that doesn't mean you can just walk all over me. I have things to say, you know, and you need to listen to me and not just talk over me all the time."

Candace Four nodded. "Fair enough."

"Good" Candace One looked relieved and yet increasingly uncomfortable now, and her eyes shot around the room before eventually landing on a book lying in the corner – one of the few that wasn't about physics, because Candace had wanted to have something lying around to entertain herself and Amanda if they ever went down here, and that seemed to happen more often than even Phineas and Ferb had anticipated when buying Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. She took it and walked over to a small room at the end of the hallway. "I'll just be in here, then. Call me for lunch, okay?"

And with that, she was gone, and Four's eyes almost immediately turned back to Phineas, who smiled reassuringly at her. "I know that wasn't an easy commitment to make, Candace" he said softly. "But for your younger self's sake, I think you should try to keep it."

"I know, I know" Four replied. "It's just… difficult, I guess. I mean, even if we did press her a bit too far, it's hard to bring myself to really forgive her for the way she yelled at me this morning. And not just at me – you should have seen the look in Three's eyes when she walked in here. She looked like she'd seen a ghost."

"I'm sitting right here" Three noted dryly.

Phineas nodded. "Are you both feeling better now, then?" His eyes were on Three, oddly enough – Four didn't think that meant anything, not in the way her possessive subconscious was used to thinking anyway. "Especially after last night?"

Three nodded. "I slept well enough after… you-know-what" she replied. "Thanks again, by the way. I know I didn't really want you to be there at first, but I think I might have remained in distress a lot longer if I had been forced to confront it all on my own. But I was actually doing pretty well this morning, until I bumped into One and didn't realize how pissed off she was" She shook her head. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm just a trouble-magnet. Nightmares, arguments… I can't remember one hour going by since I came here that went without any trouble. That's nothing against you two, of course, but it makes me wonder what's next in store. Maybe at some point Candace Two is going to flip out against me too – well, more so than she already has. Or Kevin."

Candace Four wanted to say something to comfort her other self, but Phineas beat her to the punch. "Would working on the space-time ripper cheer you up? I think the space-time continuum is gradually stabilizing, but I haven't had a chance to do an expansive test yet. I did do some other tests last night – I think you'd be interested in the results?"

Three smiled and got up to walk over to the 'laboratory' part of the basement, and Candace Four suddenly felt a bit like a third wheel. She hoped that Ferb would come over soon – if only for the fact that he'd be keeping Phineas and Candace Three company, because although she was entirely confident that nothing untoward was actually going to happen between them there was still something about Phineas being alone for a prolonged period with another version of herself that unnerved her (and, admittedly, it might be her controlling tendencies which demanded that she would know everything her brother discussed, especially when the subject matter might well concern her) and more importantly, Ferb was someone whom she could trust to translate if the other two got caught up in technobabble. Candace had no idea how it was even possible that in some situations, she was able to understand Ferb much better than she could understand someone who was her , but it had already happened multiple times yesterday alone.

For the time being, however, Phineas and Three going off to work and One going off to read left Candace with the chance to arrange some othermatters. "I'm going upstairs to look for the kids" she said, getting back up. "I left them with Kevin earlier, and they could've wandered all over the building by now. I hope she's not been encouraging their… aptitude for exploring."

"What would there be to explore?" Phineas replied. "They know every inch of the building by now."

Four sighed. "That might be the problem" she muttered. "Also, I oughta head to my office for a bit – I think I took care of everything earlier, and I'm sure the staff can take care of stuff anyway, but I better double check just in case.

Phineas nodded. "Good call. I'll see you later, then."

"Later," Candace agreed, blowing her brother a kiss before heading over to the stairs. She did check the elevator to be sure, but apparently whatever her brother had been doing here last night did not include fixing that thing. She really hoped he would get to that today, but she supposed that Candace Two would disapprove – which she got confirmed when she saw the woman giving her a glare the moment she pressed the 'up' button. Seriously, had Two been standing here the whole time? Or had she just walked in without them noticing her? Either option was fairly creepy.

But Candace Two really wasn't her priority right now – well, it was still one of her priorities because she was set on doing something about that… that issue, but that obviously wasn't something she should be doing right now – because she needed to find her children. For the good kids they often claimed to be, Amanda and Xavier did seem to get in trouble an awful lot, especially in environments like this one. Between Xavier's curiosity and Amanda's open nature, and with a version of herself left in charge who didn't even have kids of her own, those two could have wreaked havoc by now. Well, she supposed that putting it like that was a little too extreme, but even provoking minor upsets could well have had a chain reaction through all versions of herself, if the events of that morning were anything to go by. She and her counterparts were a fairly… impulsive group, after all.

Candace Four shook her head and headed up the stairs. Where were all her counterparts, anyway? It was getting increasingly difficult to keep track. Well, Two and Three were downstairs, and so was Candace One. Five and Seven were probably together somewhere (those two really stuck to each other like peas in a pod), and Kevin was probably still with the kids. She had no idea where Six could be. Maybe she was still up in her room, thinking about getting One and her world's Phineas together.

It really was a sympathetic goal, wasn't it? She and Candace Three might have just had another discussion in which they realized how many things were different between them and just how alien the other's life could be, but there had been one thing they could agree on – their relationship with Phineas had been one of the best decisions they'd ever made, and apparently that went for Candace Six too. But when Six had said so to One she had refused to be rational about it, and now Phineas had all but forbidden them from raising the subject with the teenager again. Something which Four could understand, really, because she had once been there – heck, she'd bolted out of that dance floor as if she'd been stung by a bee the moment Phineas' feelings for her had become apparent. She could hardly blame One for feeling the same way. But she knew now how much better life was with Phineas, and it kind of stung that One wasn't willing to accept that advice or even to consider it, despite it coming from someone who was essentially an older version of herself.

Oh well. Such was life. And if Phineas thought it would be best to keep off the subject from now on in order to avoid offending little Candace (she should really stop calling the girl that) any further, Four was willing to agree to that.

She got back to her office on the fifth floor to find it in pristine condition. Apparently her secretary had managed to get his act together – no wonder, as he didn't spend his precious time gawking at her the way Kirsty Huntington did at Phineas (and no, she refused to feel insecure about that ). As it turned out, there was in fact one contract she still needed to sign, so she did so, handed it in to a clerk to file off and then asked around to check whether anyone had seen her kids. As she had pretty much expected, they had come in briefly about half an hour ago, showing someone whom everyone had thought was her around the room before leaving again. Candace was not in the mood for long explanations, so she simply mumbled something about cousins before exiting the room once more.

Where could they be? Was there any place in the building that could possibly be entertaining enough for her kids to want to stick around, or was she doomed to wander on and on forever on just another wild goose chase? It seemed extremely likely. At least Fred and Angie weren't there. Without them, Xavier and Amanda would probably return downstairs eventually, and she supposed that Phineas would just call her if that happened. Candace wished she could call Kevin's cell phone number, but all of her counterparts' cell phones had remained unable to connect to the network since their arrival here. At least their batteries still worked and they could display pictures. They would all – well, probably not Five and Seven – have to sit down and exchange pictures at some point, hopefully at a moment when everything had become less stressful.

Heading towards the ninth floor where everyone else had been that night seemed like the most obvious first solution, so that was where she went. Aside from very briefly earlier that morning to check up on Phineas, she hadn't actually been here since it had been remodeled into a dormitory for her counterparts. It looked like it was mostly empty, apart from the cubicle at the end of the hallway, which was occupied. She heard two voices talking to each other – her own voice, obviously – and briefly considered going over until she realized that it might well be Five and Seven. It couldbe Six and Kevin, of course, but that would mean they had left the kids behind somewhere. Which was possible, but not extremely likely…

Oh wait. She just heard something about "Four's stupid brothers". That meant it was either Five or Seven, then. It was pretty easy to resolve these issues when there only seemed to be one subject matter at stake and everyone held strongly pronounced opinions about it.

Candace walked back into the staircase, mumbling to herself about the fact that she should really tell Phineas to get around to fixing this thing the moment she got back down, and decided to head all the way to the top next. It did have some of their fanciest equipment outside of the laboratory, and most importantly, it provided a fairly spectacular view over Danville. Binoculars had been set up which were specifically enhanced to allow a person to see across the county, state, or even across the country. (She had little idea of how it worked, but it was pretty awesome.) If Xavier and Amanda were really taking Kevin on tour, that was one part that shouldn't and likely wouldn't be lacking.

True enough, right when she got to the top floor and walked over to the exit to the roof, the hatch opened and Xavier and Amanda came back inside, followed by a grinning… wait, that wasn't Kevin. The clothes tipped her off on that right away. That was Six, wasn't it? What was she doing here?

"Oh, hey Four" the woman from outer space greeted her. "Your kids showed me around the roof. It… it isn't quite as high as the buildings on Coruscant, but it's still impressive. And those binoculars are pretty cool." She smiled softly. "I guess this gives me a place to go to when I'm feeling homesick."

"Glad you liked it" Four replied automatically, her eyes focused on the kids. "Where did Kevin go?"

"She went back to the basement… like fifteen minutes ago, I think" Xavier replied. "Didn't you run into her on the stairs?" Four shook her head. "Oh well. I don't suppose she could have gotten lost in here – not when going to find the basement, at least."

"No, this building really isn't that big" Six quipped. "I wish I could show you guys the sights across the galaxy – you'd be amazed by Coruscant, and Naboo, or even Bespin. Just as long as you stay clear of Hoth, everything is incredible in our galaxy – not that yours isn't pretty cool to visit as well." She gave Amanda a pat on the head. "Thank you for showing me around." Turning back to Four, she continued: "Your kids are great, Four. Can I ask you why you only had two? Or is that too personal, or something?"

Four snorted – her other self clearly had no issues with being too forward. "No, that's all right" she replied. "We didn't have more because we just didn't get any more – but that was okay, because we weren't actively trying for a third kid either. I've wanted to have two kids named Xavier and Amanda since I was a little girl. It came as a bit of a surprise to me when I ended up having them with Phineas, but I wouldn't want them any other way."

"Don't make this too sappy, Mom" Xavier complained, although there was a faint smile on his face.

"You two wouldn't have been born without sappiness, would you?" Six said, putting a hand on Xavier's hair and grinning as he dodged her. It was weird to see how forward Six could be around these kids that weren't her own – in fact, there was something about her that reminded Candace very much of Phineas. Which probably wasn't a surprise, given how much she obviously adored him. "But yeah, Phineas and I pretty much felt the same way after having our fourth kid. I guess that's a different stage to stop than just two, but you know what they say, if you don't have a large family, you can make one!" She paused. "Or maybe that's just a saying on Naboo. It's what they said to Phineas and me on our honeymoon, at least."

Four nodded thoughtfully, as usual being unable to follow half of what her counterpart from Koressant (Was that like a croissant? She supposed it would be rude to ask) or whatever was saying. "You guys really are married in your universe, huh?" she asked instead. "As in, a public wedding ceremony."

"Yeah, we are" Six replied. "It's been sixteen years now, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was a fancy wedding on the former Imperial Center, the way I never really expected to have one, and even though Phineas and I were only twenty-three and twenty years old at the time, we knew we wanted this. Six years of fighting against the Empire does a lot to help you bond and determine who's right for you, and I know that Phineas is right for me." Her determination reminded Four of what Phineas had said about her, Three and Six trying to influence other Candaces to enter into relationships with him – the version of him from their own worlds, at least – but the topic left her mind again when Candace Six frowned. "Is this because you're jealous of me for getting to be married to Phineas?"

Four blushed madly. Why was it that her other selves could figure her out so easily? And in front of her kids , no less? It had been bad enough when Kevin had unearthed her deepest and darkest emotions regarding Three back in the non-dimension, but at least there the only ones who had judged her were other versions of herself. "I… I wasn't jealous!" she stammered. "I… I was curious, that's all. You're leading an entirely different life and I was wondering how that worked. Because here in my dimension, Phineas and I did actually have some kind of wedding ceremony shortly before Amanda was born, but it was obviously very informal and not anything that's legally binding. And obviously, no one outside of our immediate family – and some friends, now – know we're in a relationship. That would obviously be different in your universe, considering that even you and Phineas didn't know you were related at first, let alone other people."

Candace Six gave her a slightly suspicious look and then shrugged. "I…see?" she replied. "Yeah, it's different, I guess. My marriage to Phineas was never a secret, and I wouldn't have wanted it to be one. But like I said to Three when she asked me last night, it's not like it's all rain and oases for me either. You guys got to grow up with your Phineas. I can't say that that is something I would have particularly craved, especially as I figured from the start that I would have just been too stubborn and growing up with him might have meant that I never would have realized what he meant to me. But now that you told me about the fact that you got together with him in spite of the fact that you knew you were related?" She shrugged. "I suppose I might have liked it better that way – sure beats being a stormtrooper, no matter how cool I thought that was at the time. And Phineas might, too. Although I guess that having to hide our relationship would be kriffing annoying – sorry, shouldn't have said that." That last line was addressed at the kids, who would no doubt have assured their alternate mother that what she'd said wasn't that bad if they had had any idea of what it was.

"Yeah, it was" Four replied. "You're right, though. I can't imagine not growing up alongside my brother." So apparently Three had talked to Six? She hadn't mentioned that this morning. Although given Three's desire for a normal life, it was probably no wonder that she, too, had felt a bit of envy towards Candace Six. She supposed that it was just a part of who she was that apparently no Candace's life was entirely perfect. Maybe there was a perfect Candace out there in some bizarre dimension – possibly in one in which Phineas and Ferb were the insecure and miserable ones – but she wasn't counting on it.

Six nodded. "I suppose I can get that? And oh well, even if you're having to hide your relationship, you're still with Phineas. That's enough to be grateful for." She smiled. "You know, I'm actually pretty hungry. Are you guys used to eating in the morning here, or is it just the evening?"

"We brought some sandwiches and chips from home" Amanda piped up. "And I think there were still a lot of salads and cheese sandwiches in the fridge? Did you guys eat that last night?"

"Yeah," Four said. "It's been a little difficult feeding everyone, especially because Kevin won't eat meat or dairy – she even gets uncomfortable around soy cheese and meat replacement products. It's because animals are sentient in her world, so it would be basically like cannibalism for us. And, well, Six here is from outer space and used to entirely different kinds of food."

"I'm sorry if I'm being a bit of a bother with that" Six said. "I was really hoping you guys would have ahrisa – I always eat that when I'm on a different sort of world to make myself feel better. But I suppose that if I'm going to have to stay for another while, I might as well try something from your planet, too. Like Kevin said, when in Rome, do as the Romans do – whoever they are. And we actually do have cheese where I'm from, even though I've never actually had it myself. It's weird to see it's yellow rather than blue, though."

"You guys have blue cheese?" Xavier wondered. "Like the salad dressing? Or is it actually full-on blue?"

"I don't know about dressing it," Six replied, smiling at Xavier's enthusiasm. "But no, it's blue. It's derived from bantha's." Four had the odd sense that everything in Six's universe was derived from these bantha creatures, given how often she brought them up. "If you guys ever make it to ouruniverse, you should really taste a sip of it – it's simple, but it's good nonetheless. In the meantime, all I can give you is this." She pulled her blaster over her shoulders, fiddled with a small piece on the side which she pulled out, and handed it over to the ten-year-old. "I wasn't going to agree at first, but you did deliver on the sightseeing you promised to me, and… well, I have a soft spot for kids." She turned to a stunned Four and gave her a more serious look. "I took out the triggering system so that it won't fire, but he should be careful nonetheless, and I want it back before he leaves the building. With none of the pizza taken out." She blinked. "At least I think that's where Three said it was. I don't even know what the 'pizza' is, to be honest."

"Got it" Four promised. "Say thank you, Xavier. And promise you'll return it."

"I – of course" Xavier mumbled, not taking his eyes off the blaster for a second. "Thank you. Thank you very much."

"You do realize that he's going to be useless in conversation for the rest of the day now?" Amanda wryly commented. "It's real science, and it's sci-fi."

"Speculative fiction."

"Speculative fiction, then." Amanda rolled her eyes at her brother. "Anyway, it basically guarantees maximum geekiness."

Six chuckled. "I'm sure you can handle it," she replied. "I'm going downstairs now because I'm starved, but I hope I'll see you guys later. This was fun."

"Yeah, totally," Amanda replied with a grin, watching after the alternate version of her mother as she disappeared into the staircase… and the moment she did, Mandy's expression soured and she turned to her own mother with a deep sigh. "There was no reason for you to lie about being jealous of her, Mom" she said. "I'm sure you're not the only one who has issues."

"I guess you're right" Candace replied, wishing once more that Amanda wasn't so perceptive sometimes. "But I wasn't really jealous of her. I didn't want her life, and considering that she pointed out that I wouldn't have grown up at your Dad's side, I certainly don't want it now. But it felt... uneasy that she seemed to have everything settled in her life, and us... well, you know how much of a pain keeping my brother and I a secret is. I guess I did feel a little insecure about it, and I just didn't want you two or Six to see that."

Amanda patted her mother's shoulder. "That's okay, Mom. But if that was how you felt, you should have told her. She didn't strike me as someone who'd judge you for it."

"I guess you're right." Candace smiled. "So, are you two ready to head downstairs as well, or is there anything more you want to see up here? I think all of my counterparts should be in the basement by now – well, except Five and Seven. Last time I saw them... well, heard them, technically... they were in their cubicle. And trust me, I don't think you want to meet Seven, or to interact with Five again. It's bad enough when I heard them hurling insults at me – I don't want you guys to hear that. They're nasty."

"We can deal with a little nastiness" Amanda replied with a grin, but as Candace continued staring at her she shrugged. "But if you really want us to head downstairs now, then sure, we'll do that. Xave, how many other-Moms have we met thus far?"

Xavier looked up, blinking slowly and barely looking like he was present in the room at all. Candace and Amanda waited patiently until he replied. "Well, there's Mom, who would be number Four, we spent yesterday night with One, we bumped into Two on the stairs, we gave Kevin the grand tour through the building and we just spent the last twenty minutes or so with Six" he said. "So aside from Five and Seven, I suppose that would only leave number Three? Didn't Kevin say that was the inventing one?"

"The one who was also in a relationship with Dad?" Amanda added eagerly.

"Not our Dad, technically" Xavier corrected her. "I mean, if she builds stuff, she's obviously very different from our Mom – no offense."

"None taken" Candace replied, beginning to walk over to the staircase. "And yes, she's in a relationship with her world's Phineas, and she's quite different from me – although not as different as she wants to think. She's got this... weird obsession with the thought that she's the craziest one out of us all? Don't tell her I told you that."

They headed down the stairs, Xavier following last because he was lugging the blaster with him. "Wouldn't you guys think that Five and Seven were the weirdest?" he pointed out, panting. Amanda shot him a concerned look and made a motion with her arm that suggested she wanted to help him carry the weapon, but Xavier shook his head. "I mean, what with the way you've been going on about them ever since they got here."

"Kind of, yes" Candace replied. "If you'd ask me, Seven is definitely the weirdest one – and that's not just because she doesn't think my relationship with your father is the best thing since sliced bread" she finished, giving her son a pointed look. She knew Xavier could still get... awkward around the fact that his parents were siblings sometimes, and the last thing she wanted to do was suggest that she disliked her own son because of that. "But Three is a different case. I think Kevin told you that in a way, Three and Seven are the same person due to Seven being a time anomaly?" Xavier nodded. "Well, that's part of why she thinks she's so weird – regardless of the fact that Seven's timeline diverged from Three's half a lifetime ago, and they've got completely different characters. There's more to her than that, but it's her business, not ours."

"Fair enough" Amanda conceded.

"You really think we can't talk to you number Seven?" Xavier asked. "I mean, she's an actual temporal anomaly. First-hand evidence of temporal hijinks. And you're asking us to stay away from her. It's like going to Paris and not visiting the Eiffel Tower – well, unless you're on a search for parts to repair a boat and don't have time for that anyway, I suppose – or going to Washington and not visiting the White House, I guess."

"I'm not forbidding you to do it, but I'm warning you to stay away from her" Candace replied. "She's got the strange idea that everything in life can be blamed on Phineas and Ferb – which technically it can , but that requires a really warped sense of morals which I want you to stay well clear from."

"So if you can't stand Five and Seven, is there anyone among your counterparts whom you do like?" Amanda wondered.

"As in really liking her?" Amanda nodded. "Probably just Three. Nothing against Six or Kevin or Candace One – the one your age – but they're just weird. Or in One's case, I'm weird and she's relatively normal, making it hard for me to relate either way. Two is incredibly bossy and obsessed with this Doofensmart guy, so that only leaves Three. I think it helps that we've had a couple of long arguments and also conversations. It's almost like we're friends now, which is pretty strange, but probably not the strangest thing that's ever happened to our family."

"Not by a long shot" Xavier agreed.

"True," Four replied. "I wonder if there's any way we can stay in contact with them after they get back home – I know we didn't with Five, but no matter how nice your father was in that dimension I think Three's family would be far more receptive to the idea. I'm kind of curious about mee-"

Her sentence was abruptly cut off when the latest hallway door they passed abruptly smacked open into her face. Four stepped back and rubbed her face, glancing over her shoulder to see Xavier and Amanda had come to a halt on the stairs behind her. On the other side, Five and Seven emerged, and the former noticed her bruise and gave her a mischievous look.

"Four," Seven snarled. "What are you doing here? Coming to tell us how much longer it'll take your delightful brothers to finish their work? Let me guess. It'll take another week. And then another week next week. And then another-"

"I don't have to explain why I'm anywhere in this building that is owned by my brothers in my dimension," Four snapped. "I'm sure you don't want to see me and I certainly don't want to see you, so why don't you two get on your way to wherever you're going?"

Seven gave her a suspicious look, and then glanced past her. She physically recoiled. "Of course I'd have to meet them," she hissed. "It wasn't bad enough for me to know that some versions of my little brother sunk as low as to have kids with their sister, oh no. The evidence had to be shoved into my face."

Candace Five frowned. "You can't blame them for what their - their parents did, Seven," she said, shuddering as she spoke the word. "They're misguided, not... not like this world's Phineas and Candace."

"You still think that?" Amanda commented.

Before Five could reply to that – or Four could step in to soothe the conversation, because she knew her daughter could tend to be... a little too out-spoken in situations like this – Candace Seven glitched. Xavier's eyes widened. "You really are a time anomaly!" he blurted out. "That's..." Four hoped against hope that he wasn't about to say 'amazing', but if he was, he caught himself in time when Seven glared at him. "That's a... how... I mean..."

Xavier was blushing furiously under Candace Seven's stare, and as usual Amanda stepped in. "What my brother is trying to ask is what it's like to be a temporal anomaly," she said, giving them a smile. It was a calm, soothing tone, but from the expression on Candace Seven's face it had the opposite effect. No wonder – it was Phineas' calm and soothing tone, after all.

"You want to know what it's like to be an anomaly?" Seven snapped. "It's a living hell – one that your father unleashed on me. So if you two have any common sense despite your genetics, I hope you will listen to some good advice and run away from this crazy excuse for a family as soon as you can. Run for the hills, if you need to – it's better than living out the rest of your days as a guinea pig, or worse ."

She stomped off down the stairs. Five stared at them for a moment, looking almost at unease with the situation, but then she followed her other self. Candace Four and the kids simply stared after her until the loud and fast-paced footsteps had faded away.

"Such a nice woman," Amanda commented slowly.

Xavier came out of his stupor to snort, while Candace simply shook her head. "I told you she was nasty" she said, sighing. "I don't know what made her this way, but you've got to promise me to stay out of her way for the rest of the time you're here. Both of you."

"So, you're just going to let her get away with insulting Dad like that?" Amanda replied, clenching her fists. "That's not right , Mom. She didn't even distinguish between her own brothers and yours – she simply blamed Dad for all her misery, to the point where she thought that he was a danger to us . What kind of thing could possibly have made her end up like that?"

Candace Four frowned, and tried to think back to everything Seven had mentioned the previous times they had interacted, which hadn't really been all that often. The closest example in her mind – apart from a brief attempt during dinner yesterday evening – was probably in the afternoon, right before Candace Three had had her breakdown. Although her conversation with Three had lingered in Four's brain for far longer – in part due to the fact that it was simply a more pleasant and thought-provoking conversation rather than just a rant – she could still recall at least some of Seven's words, and some of her overall views had been obvious from the start anyway.

"She said that Phineas and Ferb erased her from existence" she replied. "But she also thought Three stole her life. And that your Dad and uncle Ferb's inventions are dangerous, that they brainwashed us, and... well, even though she is Three, she can't invent stuff either. And Three's been inventing since... well, she's mentioned several times that as far as she knows, the time in which she didn't was only a relatively short phase, so it would have to have started somewhere in her teens, especially considering that she tried to convince me that busting was connected to inventing. It wasn't there during busting and at Candace One's age, but it was there when she broke up with Jeremy Johnson and when she got together with her world's Phineas."

"Meaning that the divergence that resulted in Seven's world must have happened before then" Xavier deduced. "Because otherwise she would have the same drive to invent. And whatever happened, she thinks Dad and Uncle Ferb were behind it."

"Oh, come on!" Amanda exclaimed, wide-eyed. "Dad and Uncle Ferb erasing a version of Mom from existence? There's no way that's true. And even if it was true, then that still doesn't explain why Seven seems to think that they're so innately evil that something's wrong with your brothers, too." She shook her head. "She can't really believe any of that."

"Well, she clearly does," Xavier noted. "How else would you explain her actions?"

"Xavier is right" Candace replied with a sigh. "I don't understand it, but it's clear enough that it's true. I just don't know how she could've started out fundamentally decent like Three, and then became so hateful against Phineas. Someone needs to knock some sense into her."

Amanda nodded. "Yeah, that's what I told you Six already. That Five and Seven sounded incredibly messed up, and that they would have been much happier being with Dad rather than fighting against him. I mean, from what we saw last year, Five being with Mr. Johnson clearly doesn't work."

Four frowned. "You said that to her?"

"Yeah!" Amanda replied cheerfully. "And Six agreed – apparently she'd already planned to try to even go as far as match-make them with their own versions of Dad? Having seen Seven now, I doubt that that would really be a good idea for her. I mean, if her world's version of Dad could pull her back to her senses, then kudos to him, but I doubt it."

"Might be a bad idea for Five too," Xavier commented wryly, "considering that she's married and all."

Amanda hesitated but then shrugged. "Well, she is clearly unhappy..."

"So you want her to divorce her husband to get together with Other Dimension Dad?" Xavier said incredulously. "That sounds like a plot from one of those weird movies we've..." He glanced over at Candace. "...we've definitely never watched, 'cause you told us not to, and all that." He raised his arm, and held it up for a few seconds before giving into the urge and scratching his forehead. "I mean, I haven't."

Candace sighed and turned towards her daughter. "I know you meant well, Amanda" she said kindly. "And I'm sure Six does, too. Heck, I can't blame after setting the example myself in Five's world. But we had a rather fierce clash with One this morning, and your father told us – Candace Three and me – not to bring up the matter of our relationships with her anymore. I imagine that would go for Five and Seven, too – and to be honest, I really don't want you to be involved in all this."

"Mom's right, Mandy" Xavier said. "If One was a younger version of our Mom, it'd be different. We'd have to convince her then, but we don't need to do so now."

Candace smiled. "No offense, Xavier, but I doubt you'd be able to talk my younger self into incest with her brother."

"Oh, you don't know that," Xavier said lightheartedly. "I have made some preparations for just that kind of eventuality."

Amanda rolled her eyes and poked her brother's side. "Asking Dad about every detail of how he and Mom got together isn't 'making preparations', Xave" she said. "Not for matters of the heart."

"Who's had a girlfriend for two years now?" Xavier replied, grinning proudly. "Let the one with more experience decide how to handle this, okay? You've only been together with Johnny for what, a couple of weeks now?"

"Jonathan – and it's been five months , as you know very well" Amanda said. "And no offense to Angie, but she's not exactly an average girlfriend."

"Neither is Mom," Xavier retorted. "For Dad, I mean."

"Okay, that's enough" Candace replied, even if she couldn't help but smile a little. "I hope you've gotten the point – when talking to the versions of me that aren't in a relationship with your Dad, don't try to convince them to do so and if possible, stay away from the subject altogether. I'm not going to blame you for defending me or your father if it does come up, but you shouldn't poke the bear. And yes, that means I'm calling myself a bear now, because why not?" She grinned and shrugged. "But weren't you going to talk to Three anyway? That shouldn't cause you any troubles, then. Like Kevin told you, she is already in a relationship with your father's alternate self."

"Is there anything else about her we should know?" Xavier remarked. "You know, besides the whole inventing thing?"

Candace pondered that for a moment. "Well, there is something about the whole inventing thing" she said. "Did Kevin or I mention before that in Three's universe, everyone who can invent – which apparently includes Phineas, Ferb, her and both of her kids, at least – has to deal with all these withdrawal symptoms if they don't? As in, physical illness if you go without inventing for a day or so?"

"No... no, I don't think I heard that before" Amanda replied. "That's... wow. That sounds awful."

"Yeah, it does" Xavier agreed. "How does that work? Has it always been like that? Does it start at a certain age? How will that work when they get older and can't invent any more? Does the illness get worse when more and more time goes by? How does that work with Candace Three not inventing for a while, as you said? Was she just terribly sick while busting and unable to figure out why? Can a person die from it, and how long does that take?"

"Really, Xave," Amanda said. "Do you actually think they tested that out?"

Xavier blushed. "Well... no, I guess not" he mumbled. "Maybe it's a common thing in their universe, and people could well have died. Even in their family."

"Well, even if that's true – and somehow I doubt it – you're not asking her about it" Candace warned him. "It might well be a very personal subject. I know you can't help being curious, Xavier, but just treat this as a challenge, all right? One in which you have to blend into your surroundings and not create any trouble. Can you do that?"

Xavier blushed. "Got it, Mom."

"Good." Candace smiled at him and ruffled his hair. "Stay out of trouble, okay? I know they're all me and so they shouldn't be dangerous, but..." She awkwardly shrugged. "I care about you two, and things could definitely get heated here even before you leave. So beware of that."

"Will do, Mom" Amanda promised.

"Then I'll see you when your aunt gets here." Candace opened the door to the basement and watched as her kids headed straight over to her third self, who was once again putting machinery together with Phineas and Ferb. Candace Two was guarding the door – really, she hadn't expected anything else by now – and Six and Kevin were over at... was that a buffet table? Her stomach growled – apparently it was already eleven in the morning by now. (Time really seemed to move fast these days.) She walked over and took a sandwich for herself, turning to Kevin. "Did Phineas set all this up?"

"He and Fern – I mean, Ferb" Kevin replied, once more taking a salad. Candace wondered whether Kevin only ever ate salads in her home dimensions, or whether they were falling dramatically short and they really should be offering the poor woman a wider variety of food dishes. "They were putting the sandwiches on the table when I got back here after showing your kids around. Your... brother told me that he figured that since it was almost impossible to get all of us together in one room at the same time, and we might all end up hungry at different hours anyway, it might be better to keep something to eat around all the time. He was even kind enough to show me which parts were to be avoided." She glanced over to the far end of the table, and as Candace recognized hamburgers and steaks she got exactly why Kevin shuddered. "I'm never going to eat any of that, but I keep telling myself to work up the courage to at least go over and look at it, because it's just not rational to be so afraid, but I can't even bring myself to do that ."

"You wouldn't be the only one to be irrational," Candace replied, taking a cheese sandwich. She knew she was stocking up on them by now and that she should really try to vary a bit, but eating a sandwich seemed to be faster and easier. "As far as I can tell, that seems to be a Candace-thing across the universes. And a Kevin thing, apparently?"

Kevin snorted, but she nodded nevertheless. "Apparently."

Candace silently chewed her sandwich, taking stock of her surroundings. Five and Seven had gone downstairs, but she didn't see them anywhere – they were probably in one of the side rooms, possibly having pillaged the lunch table beforehand, not wanting to be around Phineas due to their irrational prejudice against him. Six, who had been at the lunch table just now, had also disappeared – possibly going somewhere which reminded her of home. Oh well. Candace felt fairly sure that her counterpart wouldn't run off once again. And even if she'd been considering telling the other woman not to bother their counterparts again... well, Six could make her own choices, couldn't she? It felt easier to stand around here and just watch her countless other selves in amusement.

Candace Four glanced over to her second dimension counterpart, who looked as stiff as a board. Two definitely wasn't going to have something to eat, because it would interfere with her sacred duty of protecting the Flynn family from Heinrich Doofenschmaltz. Not a sandwich, and definitely not something like a hamburger that would take time to heat up, time in which some robots from twenty years ago could strike and kill them all! Come to think of it, Four suddenly wondered how Phineas was planning to have them heat up that meat on the table. She hadn't noticed a grill or an oven – oh well. Since she wasn't interested now , she would cross that bridge when she came to it... she just really hoped he wasn't planning on using his blowtorch.

"Hey."

Candace almost leaped out of her shoes before turning around and seeing Phineas smile awkwardly at her. "Oops? Sorry for scaring you, sis."

"'s all right" Candace replied, trying to get her heart to calm down again.

Phineas shrugged. "How you doing? After... you know, what happened this morning?"

Candace resisted the urge to roll her eyes – sometimes he could be a little over protective. "I'm fine, Phineas" she assured him. "I know I say that even when I'm not, but I'm definitely feeling fine right now. Three and I managed to cheer each other up, somehow. And Xavier and Amanda didn't wreck the place upstairs, so I suppose I'm as happy as I can reasonably expect to be. How about you?"

"I'm fine, Candace" Phineas replied teasingly. "Seriously, I'm doing great. We've managed to make some progress this morning in the direction of figuring out the new patterns of the changed make-up of the space-time continuum... and how to breach it, of course. It's going pretty slowly, but I think we knew from the first morning that this was going to be difficult. Ferb's been an awesome help, and so has your other self." He smiled up at her in that way that warmed her heart. "She still isn't you , though, if that's what you're worried about. And she's got a brother of her own whom she misses deeply."

Candace looked over at Three, who was engaged in a deep conversation with Amanda and Xavier, with especially the latter looking intrigued... if a little nervous? She'd have to keep an eye on him later – the last thing she wanted was for her insecurities to be replicated in her youngest child. Ferb was at work, but he was watching them from a distance and judging by his face he didn't seem to think there was any trouble. Which was good, since Ferb was impossibly perceptive and would step in if anything went even slightly wrong, probably before she noticed it at all.

"I know" she finally replied. "You know I love you, and you know I know that you love me. I just... worry about these things. Especially when there are so many other people around who are technically, well, me. But I'm doing fine now." She glanced over at her other half, who had gone to sit down in one of the fancy chairs at the corner, and joined him. "Did Ferb tell you when Isabella was coming over when he got here?"

"Around one o'clock... I think?" Phineas replied. "It could be a little bit later. Ferb got here almost immediately after you left, and by that time Isabella wasn't even sure yet herself. But she did say she was planning to take along the kids."

Candace frowned. She knew it was only natural that Fred, Angie and Milly – provided that she was no longer suffering from that cold – would want to see their aunt's other selves as well, but it would still end up making for an extremely busy basement. This was not exactly what she'd had in mind when she decided to take Xavier and Amanda along this morning and asked Isabella to come around and pick them up later... but she'd cope with it. She knew she would be able to cope with it. Phineas' arm slung around her shoulder helped assure her of that.

She returned the favour, leaning in and crouching her head against his side. They just sat there for a while, not quite hugging but being close nonetheless. Candace One came out of her cubicle at one point and gave them a look as she walked over to the sandwiches, but she didn't actually say anything and basically ignored them. Not that Candace Four would have done a single thing to change her seating arrangements if she hadn't. She didn't want to outright provoke One, but surely it would be easy enough for her counterpart to just look the other way.

Phineas left her after about ten or fifteen minutes to go back to his work, after which Candace resorted to reading a book and keeping an eye on both her unruly children and the work in progress (there wasn't too much difference between the two at times). Xavier and Amanda had conversations with about every Candace they bumped into with the sole exceptions of Two, Five and Seven, who remained in their cubicle all the time. Even when Five came out once to grab a hamburger that Ferb had warmed up, the kids stuck to the agreement and avoided her. Phineas continued working with Ferb and Candace Three. And Candace Four? She just generally felt content .

That overall placid feeling remained even into the afternoon, when Isabella and her kids showed up and ran pretty much all over the place. Fred joined his cousins, Angie approached Kevin and even barged in on poor Candace One at some point, whereas even normally quiet Milly got into trouble as she resolved to see what was wrong with the elevator and Candace Two seemed about ready shed blood over the offence. Isabella got involved to protect her youngest daughter, and in the end even Candace herself had to step in to save Milly from the bespectacled menace, who eventually relented … if by 'relented' you meant that they all acquiesced to backing off and leaving the elevator alone. With five teenagers present in the basement, Candace Four almost couldn't blame Five and Seven for remaining inside their cubicles the entire time.

But even though it took almost an hour before Isabella left again together with all of the kids, Candace found to her own surprise that the satisfied feeling she'd felt when cuddling up to Phineas had lingered. Her insecurities of the morning had been replaced by a calm feeling of... well, reassurance. Her brothers and Candace Three would fix everything, and they would get the others home no matter how long it took. Everything was going to be alright.

If Candace was honest, that didn't feel like a very rational belief to have. After all, she'd heard several times how shredded the space-time continuum had become, and the mood among her counterparts was not suited for a picnic either, what with Two still being... well, Two, and Five and Seven still holing themselves up against the outside world. Conflicts were going to happen sooner or later, even possibly between Candaces that had not or barely come to blows thus far. Candace Four knew herself well enough to realize that.

And yet, she felt content. It wasn't irrational, but sometimes irrational feelings didn't limit themselves to insecurities. Sometimes, it was those securities that Candace basked herself in right now that stuck with her no matter how many logical concerns she threw against them. And even if she wasn't blind to the fact that those concerns were there, for most of that afternoon, Candace Four simply leaned back and relaxed in the assurance that things were finally going well.


	25. Shattered Friendships

Candace Six was… alright.

That was probably a decent description of it, all things given. For all the craziness that 'traveling to another universe' might seem bring - or had brought, really, because it had been pretty insane there for a bit - it now was seeming like everything might become… alright.

Okay, it was probably never going to be boring , given that there were a lot of barvy and unique things to see, as seemed to be the case with every different planet. Still, the fact that she was alone, that her family wasn't there to join her on what else could have been a grand excursion, really sapped the enjoyment right out of it.

Still, she was alright. Candace and Phineas Four had given her, along with all the other hers, a place to stay, and things to eat, and even things to wear so she wouldn't stand out from the locals so much.

She was still contemplating the idea of ditching the clothes for her own, though. Candace Four's clothes were nice enough, but Candace Six's own clothes just breathed so much easier.

But she really shouldn't be sitting here moping all day. It wasn't going to help anything, anyway, and she was better than that anyway. Moping dejectedly might've been something she'd have done twenty years ago, or fifteen, or even ten, but she was determined to not lapse back into that old frame of mind now. After all, when was the last time in ten years that Phineas had behaved like that? Had he ever done so?

She thought not. So she wouldn't either.

She needed to find something to do, really. At first, she'd set her mind on trying to get the other Candaces to see what they could all have with the Phineases from their own dimensions, figuring that not only would it be a way to pass the time, but also had the chance to be amazing for them, in the way that had been for her.

She hadn't been completely successful with that thus far, though. Sure, she had gotten poor, brainwashed One to at least listen to her, but the girl was still clearly terrified at the thought of seeing her dimension's Phineas as anything but a brother, not realizing that he could help her break free of that dangerous 'busting' obsession that had been drilled into her. And Two had coldly shut her down in a second, refusing the idea not really based off 'incest' or anything, but instead on a more general idea that it was, in her own words, a 'waste of time'.

Candace Six wasn't quite sure what to think about that .

And then there was Kevin, who was apparently happily married to someone else and had also informed Six that she had no intention of leaving that off to take up something with Phineas - her brother. And, of course, Three and Four were already with their own brothers. So that left only Five and Seven. (Thinking of Phineas as her brother like this was kind of weird for her. It wasn't something she did a lot, or at all, really. She'd done it more in the past two days than in the past ten years combined, in all likelihood.)

Candace Six'd been on the verge of giving up her interuniversal matchmaking quests, too, but then she'd had the good fortune to run into Candace Four's two kids, and the conversation with them had rekindled her desire to try and reach out to even the two most generally disagreeable of the Candaces here. After all, before she'd met Phineas, she'd been a stormtrooper, for goodness' sake, and likely pretty disagreeable too.

The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Phineas might be just what Five and Seven needed to turn their lives around. Of course, there was that whole thing with Seven being Three or whatever? Candace Six didn't quite know how all that worked, but she was pretty sure that even that could be fixed, right? If anyone could fix it, it would be Phineas. Her husband didn't mess about when it came to defying impossible odds.

And she knew that if she could just get Five and Seven to give him the chance he needed, he could do amazing things for them.

So she would! All she really needed to do was find them, wherever they'd gone, and talk to them. She'd never really talked to either of them before - they were mostly shunned by everyone except each other, and they seemed to like it that way - but this was important. It was worth seeking them out, worth figuring out some way fire up a conversation.

She just really wanted the other hers to be happy - as happy as she was. And if there were any of them who were decidedly not happy, it was Five and Seven. So this really would be for the best, for the parties involved, if you thought about it.

Who wouldn't want to be happy, after all?

Of course, the task of finding Five and Seven might be a bit harder than it at first appeared, too. Still, she could do it. In all the years she'd been Phineas' wife, she'd done a great many tasks that had seemed impossible at first glance - and had succeeded. Of course, that had always been with his help, but… she was sure she could manage something as comparatively simple as this. And she was never going to get anywhere if she never started. It was time to get this show on the road.

With that thought in mind, Candace Six abandoned the room she'd been granted to sleep in and set out, hunting for the two targets of her mission of mercy.

It wasn't a very difficult hunt, to be sure. Five and Seven weren't anywhere to be found in any of the ninth floor rooms, and besides from that floor - the quote unquote 'bedroom' floor - the only real place where the Candaces seemed to gather together was the basement. Which was hardly an ideal setup, though, for numerous reasons. Either way, it did come in handy this once, as it pretty much guaranteed that's where those two be. All she had to do was take those flights of stairs… again. Now this was growing to be annoying. She really wished Phineas Four would fix it, but she decided not to bother him with it when he was working on getting them all home.

Besides, after taking the stairs so many times recently, she was starting to get used to it.

She reached the basement floor, and nodded to Candace Two who was, as usual, standing still and silent as a statue outside the entrance, stick in hand, standing guard. Guarding against what exactly, Six still hadn't quite figured out. Robots of some sort, right? Whatever, it wasn't really important - whatever satisfied the glareshade-wearing woman's paranoia was probably what she should be doing.

She walked through the laboratory, checking the side rooms one by one. Candace Four asked her what she was doing, but Six merely waved it off. "Oh, nothing."

Just when she'd about exhausted all the options for rooms people could've barricaded themselves inside, she heard a voice coming from behind one of them.

Her own voice, of course, as she'd slowly begun to expect over the past few days. That was probably going to be a pain to unlearn when she did finally get home… as well as the whole deal with referring to herself as 'Candace Six'? She wouldn't need to do either when she was home, of course. Eh… it was only a minor thing anyway. She could put up with being 'Six' all her life, so long as it meant she got to go home.

But enough dawdling - if she was going to do this thing, she needed to go up and do it. What exactly was she waiting for, anyway? Nothing, hopefully, yet… she still felt oddly unsure about this idea for some reason.

Oh well.

Pushing aside her unconfidence in this place, she walked up to the door behind which Five and Seven had retreated, and then firmly knocked. It wasthem, right? It should be, at least. It wasn't One's higher-pitched voice, and Two was guarding against an invisible threat, and Three was banging out some something with Phineas Four while Candace Four watched. The only person whose location she couldn't immediately recall was Kevin's, but there were clearly two people on the other side of this door.

The voices paused mid-conversation, their owners obviously not expecting to be interrupted like this.

"I'll bet it's him again," someone remarked disdainfully. "Phineas, if that's you out there, you'd better get out of here. No one wants to see you anyway."

Candace Six frowned slightly, but would not allow herself to be dissuaded. After all, when she first met Phineas, she'd not wanted to see him either - well, she had, but only so she could shoot at him, which wasn't much better, to be fair. Either way, these women needed help - help that Candace Six had gotten many time from her husband, help that she knew their own Phineases would be more than willing to provide, if they were even halfas amazing as the man she'd married.

And she was going to be the one to persuade them to give him that chance.

"It's not Phineas," she announced through the wooden panels of the door. "It's Six - Candace Six."

For a moment there was silence, during which she could only just make out some kind of muffled whispers.

At last, however, someone spoke up. "What do you want?"

She reached down and tested the doorknob, and found that it was unlatched. The door swung easily as she pushed it open, revealing a small office interior that was pretty much exactly the same as the interior of the office she'd slept in last night. The only difference, really, was that in here the desk in the middle had been shoved against the far wall, and that there was no viewport, obviously, given that this one was in the basement instead.

Candace Five was sitting on the desk, obviously having been in the middle of some sort of conversation with Seven, who was sitting on a small wooden stool, with her back against the wall.

Both of the others shot her scathing glares as she stepped inside, and Candace Six got the distinct impression that she wasn't wanted here. She instinctively mentally rechecked to be sure she had her blaster on her hip, which she did, as always.

"Get out of here," Seven said, scowling. "Don't you understand the meaning of the word 'privacy'?"

"I'm sorry," Six apologized briefly. She did understand the concept, of course, but she rather doubted that she'd be able to convince Five and Seven of anything from outside the door. Besides, this really was for their own good - it was for the best. She knew that for a fact, which was the other part of her reason for just barging in like so.

"Well?" Five sighed impatiently. "If you're just going to bulldoze your way on in, you can at least give us a reason why."

"Right!" Candace nodded, then hesitated slightly. She needed to come up with a way to bring up the subject, and not allow them any room to avoid the realization that she was trying to induce. But at the same time, she had to be careful, be gentle - to have tact .

It wasn't something that she was particularly good at, really - she supposed that growing up as a stormtrooper had had something to do with that. There was never space for beating around the bush in her childhood. She had been five and six years old, already lugging around lethal weapons and enforcing the rule of the Empire, already used to being one of the faceless many that had devoted their lives to quelling any sort of rebellion. It was all she grew up knowing, and it'd been drilled so far into her brain that it was likely never to be uprooted fully.

But she wasn't dumb . And she'd had many opportunities in the two-and-a-half decades since then to observe the other way of dealing with situations such as these. And she'd tried with One and Two and… well, and failed. But she determined to try again, and she was determined to succeed. It was what her husband would do, and she was going to do it to.

She became aware of the other two simply staring at her, so she cleared her throat awkwardly. "So… how are you two?"

"Oh, please," Seven scoffed. "I know you did not come in here to ask us how we are . You think we're stupid?" She shook her head. "You probably do."

"No, of course not," Six hastily replied. "I was just trying to, uh, start a conversation up. You know, the way you do."

"Well, let's see," Seven groused. "In the past two days I fell through a portal into nowhere, then got to meet a group of brainwashed loony tunes who can't tell stupid when it smacks them in the face, then I get forced back into contact with the only two people that I resolved I would never see nor speak to again? Oh, and on top of all that, they're just as - no, scratch that - even worse than what I expected." She crossed her arms in huff. "I'm doing just dandy, thanks."

"Why do you even care?" Five asked suspiciously. "You're Six , you know, one of… those. What do you want?"

"I'll tell you what she wants ," Seven muttered under her breath.

"It's… it's complicated?" Six grimaced, well aware that she wasn't handling this as well she probably needed to. Maybe she should just try for another tack and go after the situation head on? Not, of course, directly , but more head on than she had at least been doing so far. Which, considering that she'd said basically nothing on the subject so far, wasn't very direct at all. She took a deep breath. Maybe she should just start at the very beginning. "What were you guys' childhoods like?"

"Oh. My. Gosh." Seven threw her head back and heaved a huge sigh. "You do not want to go there. Suffice to say it was a terrible, terrible time of my life that I was eventually lucky enough to realize would never stop unless I got away from the root of the problem."

Six blinked. "Oh."

Five still had the light of suspicion in her eyes but she shrugged her shoulders. "It was… eventful, I guess. There was a lot of crazy stuff going on, like, all the freaking time. I… well, I have to admit I was kinda relieved when everything started finally settling down as time passed. People aren't meant to live like that." She paused. "But why do you want to know, anyway?"

"I… was just wondering," Six replied. "You know, to, uh… compare it to mine? And all that."

Five crossed her arms. "And what was yours like, then?"

Six frowned slightly. "Well…" It wasn't generally something she was super fond of talking about, but an idea had occurred to her. This might be just the opportunity she needed to get through to Five and Seven. After all, once they heard what Phineas'd been able to do for her , surely she could at least persuade them to give him a chance ? It was all she asked, really. She took a deep breath and began. "I was born thirty-nine years ago - 17 BBY - on Tatooine. That… is really all I remember about that part. I had a family that loved and cared for me, but I never knew them, really. Because when I was about, oh I don't know… five or six years maybe, I left Tatooine and joined the Empire as a stormtrooper. No one for sure knows if I was brainwashed or left willingly… and it doesn't really matter in the end. Either way, I left, and that was that. And for the next, oh, about eleven years, that's what I did." She noticed the blank faces on her audience, and shook her head slightly. She - she should have realized this was going to be an issue. "What don't you understand?"

Seven rolled her eyes and scowled. "I shouldn't have to listen to this. You're obviously not in your right mind anyway. For more reasons than one."

"What's a 'stormtrooper' anyway?" Five asked. "I mean… the thing that comes to mind is, like, some kind of soldier? But that can't be - you said you were only six?" She suddenly shifted uncomfortably, as if embarrassed to be caught interested at all. "But I guess I don't really… want to hear about any of that. I mean, look how you turned out."

Candace Six didn't miss the scathing tone in that closing remark, but she let it slide for now. This was for the best, and she couldn't screw up her chances by letting them get under her skin. "No, you're right. That's exactly what they are - what I was." She shrugged slightly. "Nobody really knows why the Empire let us in like they did. I've heard that it was a bureaucratic loophole in some early drafts of paperwork that failed to specify a minimum age? Whatever it was, it was closed soon after, and I - along with two others - was the only child stormtrooper that I personally ever saw, though there could have been more. Either way. I grew from six to seventeen living that life - one in which the only thing I knew was to follow orders, to be loyal to the Empire and the Emperor. And my only desire in life was to bust rebels." She grimaced slightly as she recalled the memories. "You know, I didn't even know how old I was for sure until some years after I got out and we happened to discover an old copy of my Tatooinian birth certificate?" A certificate that had been momentous to discover for a good many reasons, for sure, though that had been one of the smaller ones.

She pulled a chair away from the nearby wall and sat down on it. "To make a kinda long story short, though, when I was seventeen years old, I was stationed on the Dea…" she hesitated, suddenly remembering yesterday morning, in which she'd tried to tell this same story to Four and One and Kevin and how they had gotten all tripped up over not knowing the battlestation by name. How could she phrase it more simply? "On this… giant spaceship with a huge laser on it that was strong enough to destroy an entire planet at a time. The Death Star." She paused, trying to discern if that had been enough explanation, but when no one spoke up, she assumed it had and continued.

She liked this part anyway. It was a story that she simply couldn't get enough of telling. Although her own role in it was somewhat embarrassing and something she could never regret enough, that still paled in comparison to Phineas' part.

"So, anyway, I was there, you know, guarding it and whatnot. Well, not actually - I'd been assigned to go down to Tatooine and get socks for - it's a long story. Suffice to say that while I was down there, I caught a glimpse of some kids with a compact disc of the plans for the station - which had been stolen sometime before. And I tried to catch them, but they got onto a spaceship and got away from me. So I went and got the socks and went back up to the space station and gave them back to my superior." She paused. "Well, I didn't exactly give him the socks but… well, you won't really care. It's not that important anyway."

She stopped to look more closely into the faces of her audience. Seven still had her arms crossed and staring off into nowhere, looking like she hardly cared at all. At least Five looked halfway interested. There was that. Besides, she hadn't gotten to the best part yet.

"So I was ordered to guard this console thing. And I did, but then who should I see, but the exact same kid I saw before, down on Tatooine. And of course, I wanted nothing more than to bust him, because he'd already gotten away from me once and all that. So I ran after him, and he ran away, like you'd expect." She paused and smiled slightly.

"But then, I turned a corner during all that, and there was a sewage spill in the hall for some reason, and I slipped on it. And there just so happened to be a door open right there , a maintenance door that opened out onto the main garbage disposal chute. And I slid through it and only just managed to grab onto the edge of this tiny metal platform to stop myself from falling off. But I was hanging by my fingertips - and I couldn't hang on forever. I tried to climb back up, of course, but my armor was covered in the sewage I'd slid through and it was making it too slick for me to be able to get a grip on anything." She shook her head. "And I yelled for help, even though I knew there was no one around to help me. I thought for sure I was going to die. And then, right when I lost grip and started to fall, someone grabbed ahold of my arm - and who should it be but that exact same kid ." She smiled wider. "And, of course, I was happy to be alive - but I was stunned and dumbfounded and confused out of my mind. I mean, I'd just tried to kill this guy, and then he turns around and saves my life ? And I was like… he couldn't be that bad of a person, could he? Not if he would do something like that, and what's more, immediately turn his back to me and walk off? Like, I could've shot him then, too. But, I didn't of course, because by then I was… just too in awe."

'In awe' had never really ceased being accurate at describing how she felt about her husband. Sure, she'd known him for many, many years now, but she still occasionally got overwhelmed by it all. He had literally plucked her from the jaws of death and, well, risked everything to do it, too. He couldn't have known that she wouldn't shoot him the moment he'd pulled her to safety. And yet… he'd done it anyway. Even so many years after the incident, she still couldn't comprehend.

She liked to think she would be so selfless and caring should a similar situation happen to her , too, but rather doubted she would in reality. That whole… state of mind seemed to be something only Phineas could truly pull off.

"Anyway," she resumed, clearing her throat. "He'd already given the station plans to the Rebels by that point, and the station was pretty much doomed. We saved his brother - another long story I won't get into - and only just managed to get on the last buspod off the Death Star." Of course, later she'd learned that Phineas' smuggler friend had actually gone back for them after that, only to find them already safely gone. She wondered how it might've gone if the buspod had been gone and they'd had to wait for her in the end - but, of course, that was hardly important. Because now she was starting to get the real point of her long, long story: showing by example exactly how much Phineas could do to help these other Candaces if they would just let him.

But, unfortunately, that was never to be, for right about then, she made a fatal slip of the tongue, revealed a crucial detail too early, and the course of the conversation was entirely derailed. The attention she'd managed to get from Seven and Five thus far was probably more due to boredom than to any real interest in her story, and that thin spell was about to be shattered.

"So we were all riding on the buspod to Yavin Four - another planet," she continued. "And I was feeling all jittery inside for some reason. It made me really nervous around him, even though he was nice enough. That's when he told me his name was Phineas and-"

And the deed was done. The words were out and there was no taking them back now, no matter how hard she might hope to the contrary.

"Wait, wait, wait," Seven interrupted. "You mean to tell me that you've been sitting here rambling to us about how you married your brother ? Oh, that'll be quite enough, then. No one wants to hear how that ends."

"No!" Six exclaimed. "I mean, well, yes, but you have to understand: what Phineas did for me was-"

"No one wants to hear that!" Five cut in, making a face. "We all know what he did for you. And nobody, I mean nobody wants to hear it. Trust me, I have had enough of this crap shoved into my face in the past year. You take it and you shove off."

"Please, no, wait," Six tried to reason, suddenly getting exasperated with herself. She'd been doing so good, too, and now it was all coming apart at the seams. She had to get back in control of this thing.

"Wait?" Seven demanded. "Wait for what ? For you to ramble on about how great your brothers are?" She scoffed harshly. "Lemme tell you something - I've been listening to that load of crap my entire life. Those idiots did nothing but destroy my life and everything I hold dear. So you might say I've 'seen the light'. And there's nothing anyone is going to be able to do change that."

"Yeah!" Five chimed in, standing up. "No matter how you think or feel or whatever about it, incest is wrong and it is sick and that is all there is to it!"

"It's not-"

"Didn't you hear her?!" Seven nearly yelled. "We don't want to hear about Phineas and Ferb, we don't want to see Phineas and Ferb, we don't want to acknowledge the existence of Phineas and Ferb. Do you get the general idea by now? Despite whatever they've brainwashed you to think, the world would be better off without them - without any of them . Wouldn't it, Five?!"

"Yeah!" Five agreed. "That's exactly - wait, what?" She paused awkwardly.

Seven turned her head to look back. "What do you mean, 'what' ? You heard what I said, didn't you?"

"I mean…" Five hesitated, seeming to be somewhat at a loss for words. "I heard you, but… better off without them? Doesn't that feel a bit harsh?"

"Harsh?" Seven echoed, as if she couldn't believe her ears. "Are you defending them now?"

This was getting a bit out of control for Candace Six's liking. She didn't know where this conversation was going exactly, but she could tell where it was not going, that being 'where she wanted it to go'. She needed to get this thing back on track as quickly as possible. She could still do that, right?

"Defending them - no!" Five protested. "I mean - what Four and her brother do is awful, it's repugnant, and I think it's about as low as you can possibly get - and that's what I've thought ever since last year I was here, even, but, I mean, my brothers-"

" Your brothers?" Seven scoffed. "They're no better than the rest of them, I assure you. I would think you'd have realized that by now!"

"No, I mean," Five hesitated again. "Look, Seven, I-"

"Hey, guys," Six interjected. "Can we-"

Five and Seven turned to look at her simultaneously. " Shut up !"

She blinked, a bit taken aback by the ferocity of their outburst.

"Oh, oh, I see how it is," Seven spat viciously. "You still can't wrap your head around what's really going here, can you? Or have your preciousbrothers gotten inside your head too?"

"No!" Five shouted. "Listen, Seven, I'm sure your brothers are as terrible as you say, and I know that Four's and Three's and-"

"Oh, but your own brothers are such precious little angels?" Seven retorted. "Did you learn nothing from being struck by lightning as a child? From being trapped in a pocket dimension and left there to suffer? You sicken me."

"Well, I - I don't care!" Five snapped. "For the past two days I've listened to you talking about them, and you may be right about the others, but you can't include my brothers in there! They were annoying and immature, yeah - were . But they grew up and left that kiddy stuff behind them! And they made me suffer and ruined a good deal of my childhood, yeah, but that's over now."

"Oh, is it?" Seven mocked. "If you really believe that, you're an idiot , that's all I have to say."

"I am not ." Five slammed her hand down on the desk. "And maybe my brothers and I have got a lot of issues, but they're workable and I will notagree that the world would be better off without them because, quite frankly, it wouldn't !"

"Alright then." Seven pulled herself up and leered icily in her direction. "If you love your wonderful brothers oh-so much , then why don't you have sex with them, hmm? Why don't you marry them? What's stopping you?"

"I - what?!" Five looked utterly flabbergasted. "I - where would you get the impression that was anything close to what I meant?!"

"Well, you said it yourself in your wonderful little speech about how great they are," Seven snapped. "If you really feel that way, then why don't you act like it?"

Candace Six was feeling increasingly awkward as she sat in the holochair, wishing that the floor would open up and swallow her whole, debating on how subtly she would be able to play off making a break for the door and getting out of here.

"I do not feel that way, I never have , I never will , and I never said anything like that!" Five threw her arms up in the air. "I don't know what's wrongwith you?!"

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?" Seven took a deep breath and gestured to her own body as she flickered in and out. "Why don't you take a look ? You know, I thought maybe I'd finally found someone who'd realized that their kind is nothing more than a pestilent plague on the face of the earth, but no - I guess not!"

"I guess not!" Five yelled back. "Because I never felt that way either - or said anything to give the effect that I did either!"

"No, you didn't," Seven responded coolly. "And I thought it was because you were naive and hadn't seen the full extent of the damage they can wreak on innocent lives, but I guess I wasn't right there either, was I ?" She stepped closer to Five, almost getting into the other woman's face. "Instead I get to deal with a lying, scheming, backstabber who might as well be the fourth incestuous freaks because there really is no difference between you and Four and Three and Six at all - you're all brainwashed zombies with no real control of your life, no real choice in your actions, no real effect on your destiny!"

"That is not true!" Five's face was getting very red by this point. "Where does this stupid argument even come from?" She suddenly reached up and shoved Seven, hard, enough to send the other woman stumbling backwards into a bookshelf, knocking a few books off the higher shelves. Six winced as one of them banged Seven directly on top of the head, but the woman didn't even seem to notice as Five continued yelling. "Get awayfrom me! Just because I actually have a normal relationship with my brothers you suddenly assume - assume all that ? What - what even are you, anyway? Whatever happened to you - I'm starting to feel inclined to say you deserved it."

Seven looked up, and the fire in her eyes blazed so hotly that even Candace Six winced slightly. And she was fairly sure that no one - least of all Candace Five - saw the woman, right in the middle of flickering in and out of existence at all, draw back her fist. But she heard the sound of flesh against flesh, and Candace Five stumbled backwards with a yelp. "I'm a temporal anomaly," Seven growled, her voice so filled with vitriol and hatred that it made shivers run up Candace Six's spine. "I shouldn't exist and I don't belong. But I can still you give you a black eye, which is the least of the things you deserve."

"You - you psychopath !" Five exclaimed, covering her left eye with both her hands. "Ugh - I am so done with you! You - you never speak to me again, you hear! Get out of my way!"

The last exclamation was directed not at Seven, but at Candace Six, and Five brushed past the chair she was sitting nervously on and stormed out into the hallway, covering up the side her of face the whole time.

"Well, what're you still doing here?" Seven spat, addressing her directly.

Candace Six almost jumped, suddenly rethinking her original reason for coming in here. Maybe it was for the best that Phineas Seven, wherever he was, never met Candace Seven. It would certainly be the best thing for him, anyway. He would be much happier elsewhere. "Nothing," she said quickly, averting her eyes from the other Candace's burningly malevolent stare. "I'm - I'm gone."

She stood up and quickly darted from the room, through the laboratory, past a stunned-looking Phineas and Candace Four, and into the stairwell. There she finally stopped, and let out a long breath.

Well, that had been a disaster.

There was no way around that conclusion. She'd gone in there to spread her happiness - happiness she got from her marriage to Phineas - and had ended up sparking a vicious argument between the two Candaces she was supposed to be reaching out to, driving them away from each other. She hadn't even said all that much, really - it had all been them.

They'd tried to argue together against her for a minute at most, but it had all come crumbling down far too quickly and now Six was left out of luck. One had rejected her, Two had rebuffed her, Five and Seven and Kevin had all shoved her well-intentioned outreach aside.

Really, it didn't so much as make her upset for herself as for them - for she knew what they would now be missing out on. Of course, perhaps she was being to hard on herself. Kevin claimed she was happy enough married to someone else, One was just a teenager and couldn't perhaps be ready for this kind of thing? It was a big step, after all, as it had been for her. And Two was… well, she ran out of justifications there. Because Two and Five and Seven were obviously not happy and yet… nothing. Didn't they want to be happy?

Was the fact that Phineas was their brother such a huge deal to them? Yes, Candace Six could admit that she'd never looked at Phineas as a brother, or considered him as such, so it was probably easier for her to deal with than, say, for One - who'd grown up with Phineas and had alwaysconsidered him a brother.

And yeah, incest. Candace Six knew well enough. But for her, even when she'd first found out of her and Phineas' blood tie, it hadn't proved enough to separate them. It was just one tiny bump in the path, really, one of the easier ones to surmount.

And of course, again, it would be harder for the ones to whom Phineas was a brother, rather than a complete stranger who had willingly put his life on the line to save hers - for a chance to save hers, even, because there had always been that chance that he would have been unable to hold his grip and would have fallen off with her. But there had also been a chance he could save her, and against all odds, he'd taken that chance.

And he'd done more than that, too - so much more. When she was still growing accustomed to life as anything not a stormtrooper, when she needed help or explanations about a myriad of seemingly simple things, he was there. Always kind, always patient, and always infinitely helpful and sweet.

She'd fallen for him, hard, and although it had been difficult, she had one day confessed her crush and, to her utter joy and a little bit of astonishment, he'd accepted it. And she'd never wanted anything else more than she'd wanted to just be with him, all the time.

Which feelings, as the years slid by and they managed to spend what was left of her teenage years together, had only increased in strength, until she hadn't been able to keep herself from proposing to make it permanent indeed, and they'd been engaged to be married.

When, only months after that had happened, the realization of her and Phineas' family history had dawned upon them, along with all the crazy things that such knowledge must inevitably bring, it had been difficult. But in the end, it hadn't been enough.

The day they were married was one of the happiest days of her life so far, and she would still occasionally look through the holographs of that day, and smile at the memories that had been created - at the family that had been founded.

And that, to Candace Six, was more important that any symbols etched on flimsiplast could ever be.


	26. When Worlds Collide

Little brother…

How had it come to this?

Candace Flynn Five knew that her life had once been filled with unexpected twists and turns. She had never quite been able to cope with that in her teen years, but fortunately all the chaos in her existence had gradually straightened out in the end. Everything had become normal. She had grown out of her insecure puberty to marry the man of her dreams, Jeremy Johnson, and have three amazing kids with him. She had channeled the busting impulses that had ruined so much of her childhood into her well-paying job of being a lawyer, and she'd watched as her little brothers Phineas and Ferb had grown out of their immaturities as well and gone off to lead their own lives. Phineas had married Isabella, Ferb had married Vanessa, and they had both achieved stable existences with families of their own.

Sure, there were some issues. Maybe she and Phineas didn't have as much time to see each other as they used to, and the same went for her and Ferb, or even for Phineas and Ferb. But that was only natural – it was part of growing up. And maybe Candace still hadn't overcome all of the insecurities that drove her in her youth. Maybe she still got incensed when evidence disappeared, or when things happened around her that were just plain weird. But she'd gotten psychiatric help for that, and she knew that for whatever reason, her husband loved her. (Yes, he did. She would not let little Candace One's words affect her thoughts on that.) She had a family, a well-paying job, and her life was settled.

It was normal.

And thus when Candace's mind had been abruptly torn away from that normalcy last year and deposited into the body of another Candace Flynn – a Candace Flynn who was more used to such things than she was because she was in a romantic relationship with her own brother, a brother who had never grown out of that immaturity of his childhood and dragged his sister down with him… well, it had been clear then whose life was right and whose was wrong.

Incest! The thought that a version of herself had sunk that low revolted her. And for days she had worried whether Other Phineas harbored such feelings against her , too, and that thought of not being just an outside observer watching in but being pushed to participate had been just too much. She had snapped in so many ways that week. Her sanity had become frazzled – and yet, how could it not have, in a world which was so bizarre?

Other Candace, however, had seemed utterly unaware of her own craziness. She'd even tried to convince Candace Five that she was the one in the wrong, and she had done the same thing with Candace's own brother, who had proven to be far more open to listening to such arguments than she could have ever dreamed he would be.

It wasn't that Candace hadn't made mistakes along the way, such as yelling at that dimension's Phineas because of her own paranoia, or the realization that she really had not been as close to her brothers as she should have been for a long time. But unlike her counterparts, Candace Five was determined in her efforts to be normal and stable. She owned up to her mistakes, and tried to fix them. (She supposed that that was easier for her to do so because her mistakes hadn't included something as major as incest, but Candace Four had to have been pretty far gone by the time that had happened.)

And even where her issues had persisted over the past year after her return home, she could easily see her other self's influence in them. Such as the fear she felt when reaching out to Phineas, and the long time it took for her to feel fully assured that no, her brother felt no creepy desire towards her. But even the concern over why Phineas wanted to have a closer, more codependent and less adult relationship than she generally did was one she had managed to suppress. Phineas did not have creepy feelings for her. She knew that.

And not even Candace and Phineas Four putting the fear of incest into her heart, not even the fact that on one of the key issues of her life she could no longer talk to her psychiatrist, was going to stop Candace Five from improving her relationship with her brothers and with Jeremy.

But just as it seemed like she had managed to take the right lessons from last year and get her life back on the rails into a happy, close but still essentially free family – both with her husband and kids and with her siblings – fate had struck again and deposited her in another weird encounter with no less than seven other versions of herself, probably again engineered by one of Phineas' countless irresponsible failed experiments. (Four had said that it hadn't been, but Four was obviously way too attached to her brother for a fair assessment. Candace wondered how having a sister who only praised him rather than ever pointing out and helping fix his obvious flaws might have hindered Phineas' development and lead him to where he was now.) And where she had hoped at first that across all these worlds, common sense and logic would have prevailed and a majority would be married to Jeremy, one Candace after the other had come out of the woodwork expressing either indifference or outright support for incest with their brothers .

Trying to protect her younger self from weirdness had backfired dramatically last night, and now Candace Seven, the only Candace she thought she could trust and agree with, had abruptly turned out to be a psychopath. And as she thought about it, the signs had always been there – she'd just been trying not to see them.

Candace Five knew psychology, and she knew why she hadn't left Seven's side before. Because to see Candace Seven for the psycho she was would have meant accepting the one thing she had to accept now – that out of eight versions of herself across the multiverse, she, the Candace who had lead a normal life with her boyfriend and husband, the Candace who had grown out of childhood immaturities and watched her brothers do the same, was alone . And if the only way not to condone sex with her own brother was to wish for his death, then…

…then what kind of multiverse was this?

…then who was Candace Flynn?

I remember when you first came home.

Candace Five had loved her brother from the day he was born. It was impossible not to – he was just so small, adorable despite his oddly shaped head, and he smiled at everything. Her life had been so lonely before that day, no matter how much her parents had done to cheer her up. She had been too young to go to school, which meant that her only friends were Stacy… and Ducky Momo. And even Stacy hadn't really come into contact with her until after Phineas had been born, which meant that at that age, Phineas' entry into her life was the best thing that had ever happened to her and she had doted on him beyond belief.

Then came another…

And then there was Ferb, of course. Quiet, imperturbable Ferb. Candace had never quite been able to figure him out, but Phineas had taken to him like a fish to water. Pretty soon, the two had been inseparable, and Candace's older bond with Phineas had come under strain, even if Phineas had always maintained an effort to stay close to her regardless.

…little brother of our own.

She had never managed to get as close to Ferb as she was to Phineas (well, by now she supposed that she kind of had, but that was because until last year she wasn't really close to either of her siblings anymore), but she'd still cared about him. He was obnoxiously competent and annoyingly silent, but he was kind, he was helpful, he had saved her life several times and she'd do the same for him in a heartbeat.

Even when you'd break my toys…

Phineas and Ferb had interfered in what she was doing and ruined it so many times. Upstaging her. Making her look ridiculous in front of Jeremy because of their new project of the day just happened to interfere with what she wanted to do – be it becoming a star, working for stores at the mall, or whatever thought that caught her fancy, her brothers would be there and make it into a terrible and wild experience for her. And that wasn't even counting the times they had actually tampered with her possessions, either.

…you will always be my…

And yet, at the end of the day Candace knew they didn't mean to. That Phineas and Ferb had helped her on her path to success as often as they'd hindered it. That the radical alterations to her life had been done out of childhood enthusiasm, not out of malice. It was simply a side effect of having that much power concentrated in the hands of two preteens. Preteens who loved her.

…little brothers, 'cause you're younger, we're related and you're boys.

Phineas and Ferb were her family, no matter what happened. She'd known that and she'd always known that, but apparently Candace Seven had forgotten. Well, it was something that Candace Five wasn't forgetting. They were family. That meant that they weren't relationship material, unlike what Three and Four and Six seemed to think, but it also meant that she cared about them, because she knew they cared about her and would help her out whenever she really needed it.

Even when you're making too much noise…

There had been so much 'noise', spillover from Phineas and Ferb's inventions, in her life even when they weren't actively touching something that belonged to her. It wasn't just the impossible experiments they got up to which were hard enough to ignore, but it was just the fact that when she walked into the backyard, she could get sucked into an insane contraption which would batter her up and stretch her body in more ways than she could imagine was possible. It was no wonder that she'd ended up exhausted after every day. And most of the time, it wasn't even malice – Phineas and Ferb had simply not realized what they were doing to her. Well, Phineas hadn't. Maybe Ferb had gotten it to some extent, but he just hadn't cared enough to intervene. He hadn't deemed it serious enough – and since she knew he did care about her, maybe he hadn't been so different from Phineas in that regard.

…you will always be my…

But as time had passed, they'd grown up, and her brothers had caught on. They had stopped their dangerous inventions, and they had made a concerted effort to leave her be. In the old days, she couldn't go a day without Phineas and Ferb upsetting the laws of physics in a way that hampered her life. But by now, both of her brothers had acquired a serious job, a real job, a job that was… well, real. Whatever that meant. It was obviously good. And even if Candace Four's tampering had revived some of those childish urges to tinker with impossibilities in Phineas' mind, he wasn't putting anyone at risk with them. Not anymore.

…little brothers, 'cause you're younger, we're related, and you're boys.

Candace Flynn had built up her own life with her husband, but she still kept in contact with brothers who loved her and whom she loved back. And wasn't that at the core of a sibling relationship? Even if they had maybe overdone the distance thing, and even if her relationship with Jeremy was a little flawed – and so was Phineas' with Isabella – they were normal. They were healthy .

And no other Candace Flynn could convince her otherwise.

Little brothers…

A sudden knock on the door of the ninth floor cubicle she'd fled back into after everything that had gone down over the past hour or so disturbed her reverie. Logically speaking, the knocker might well be Candace Seven, but Five held no illusions that the other woman would ever be knocking on the door right now instead of just barging in. And the volume of the knock would certainly not be so soft.

Which made Phineas Four the far more likely option, and he was the last… well, second to last person she wanted to see right now. She had no doubt that he'd set out to talk to her and reassure her that everything was fine and dandy, only to get right back to his dangerous experiments right thereafter. That's what he'd always done in his immature phase, after all.

"Go away, Phineas" she called out. "I don't want to talk to you right now."

"I'll tell him that" came the dry reply. "But I'm not Phineas. I'm Candace Four."

Okay, this was the last person she wanted to see right now.

Before she could tell Four in no uncertain terms to leave her alone, the other woman barged in. Candace glared at her. "I know what you're here to do," she said, disgruntled. "You and Phineas overheard my fight with Seven and what it was about, and now you're probably thinking I've suddenly switched to your side, right?"

Candace Four shrugged. "The fact that you were finally able to break through Seven's lies and call her out on them does seem suggestive" she replied. "But I suppose that you're about to tell me that you haven't changed a bit, and that my brother and I are creeps, and that you still can't stand the sight of us?"

Five bristled. "Don't make me into something I'm not" she hissed. "I've never been a sibling-hating psychopath like her. I still think Phineas and Ferb can be annoying, yes, and I may resent some of the things they did, and I don't ever want to be in a relationship with my Phineas the way you are with yours. But they are still my brothers, I'd die to save their lives if I needed to, and I don't care what she thinks that says about me!"

Four raised an eyebrow, and sat down on the bed opposite her. "Well, at least that's a start."

"See?" Five said, chuckling wryly to herself and shaking her head. "I knew you would say that. It's not enough that you're in this crazy thing with your brother, but you just have to force it on the other ones, too. What is it, you just can't deal with normalcy? That I lead a sane life rather than your bizarro existence?" She stared up at her counterpart. "You know what, Four? You and Seven aren't so different. You think the only way to handle Phineas is to hate him or to marry him, because neither of you understand healthy sibling relationships!"

Four folded her arms, looking infuriatingly unimpressed. "You done?"

Five scoffed. "What, you're not even going to try to deny it?"

"I already had that conversation with Candace One this morning" Four replied, stirring an uncomfortable memory that Five quickly suppressed. "And I'm not going to repeat it, because that's not what I came here to talk to you about."

Candace raised an eyebrow. "Then what, pray tell, did you come here to talk to me about?"

"About why you, if you truly do care about your brothers, have been so hostile to us – and most of all to my Phineas – until now" Four replied. "And don't tell me that's just because he's with me. You weren't driven by righteous vengeance for most of the time, Five. You were driven by spite, against me and against him." She shook her head. "You know what? I can understand you being disturbed by the things we do. I was there too, once. But that doesn't justify you teaming up with Seven – someone you just said was insane – to take us on. To take down Phineas."

Candace Five clenched her fists. "Don't you dare tell me what things I am or am not justified to do" she whispered. "I'm Candace Gertrude Flynn, and I'm living my own life, as far away from your craziness as possible." She noticed the unimpressed look in Four's eyes and forced herself to calm down. Getting angry was not only unbecoming of her, it was also entirely unproductive. "Yes, I shouldn't have teamed up with Seven from the start. I know that, now. But when she's the only one who can see sense when it comes to incest, that drives a person to do crazy things. Even condoning or publicly agreeing with insults towards Phineas and Ferb and you that were sometimes… disproportional."

"That's it?" Four said, looking rather like she was having a hard time keeping a lid on her own temper. "That's your excuse – that Phineas and I living out our own lives provoked you into doing all those things against us, so basically you're not at fault for any of it? For crying out loud… I knew your explanation was going to be flimsy, but I didn't expect that !"

"I said that I shouldn't have done that, didn't I?" Five replied curtly. "But yes, I am going to blame you for living the kind of life that disturbs me to the bone because it's so blatantly wrong and you know it is. You know you should have been with Jeremy, not Phineas . Do you have any idea how many months it took me to stop having nightmares about all that? My husband thought I was going insane, my psychiatrist wasn't helping because I couldn't tell him the full story, and I couldn't turn to my brothers for help – besides the fact that they're obviously not people I should ever need to turn to – because I couldn't even look Phineas in the eyes! Congratulations, Four – you broke me. Your unhealthy relationship with your own brother is wrong , for you, for me, for Phineas and for anyone around you, and I'm going to keep fighting it for as long as I can."

" I. Am. You ." Candace Four hissed. "Any objection you could think of is one that I've already thought of, and I know I love Phineas. With all my heart. And I also know that that situation is a lot healthier than how you imagine it to be – and than whatever you've got going on with Jeremy. So even if you don't like it, the least you could have done was put up with it as long as Phineas was helping you get back home from this latest incident we've gotten ourselves wrapped up in, but you didn't do that. You conspired against us with Seven at every turn, and you helped Seven hurt him. And don't think I've forgotten about that bowling alley incident, either. If it had been up to me back when we first met up in the non-dimension, I would have punched you twice ."

"Don't try to pretend you're some kind of saint, Four" Five snapped. "I know that when you were in my world, you did anything but simply 'put up with' my relationship with Jeremy and Phineas' with Isabella – you tried to convince my brother to commit incest with me, and even if I don't know the exact details of what happened between you and Isabella or you and my Jeremy, I've got to fear for the worst! And at least I was justified in trying to bring your relationship down here – it's wrong and it's so blatantly not right that I can't even begin to explain why! I wanted you to be with Jeremy because that's where you know you should be, but what was your excuse? Why in the world would you want to inflict your incestuous relationship on another reality as well?"

"Maybe it doesn't occur to you that because I love Phineas, I tried to get you and him together because I only wanted the best for you and for his other self!" Candace Four yelled back.

"No, that hadn't occurred to me – my mind has never been bent in the kind of ways that would allow me to imagine something like that!"

"My mind has not …" Candace Four hesitated and caught her breath. Before Five's astonished eyes, she then shook her head and chuckled. "You know, I didn't come up here to argue with you. And yet, that's all we've been doing since the moment I got here. Look, Five. You say you're not like Seven. You say you love your version of your brothers. I feel the same way – regardless of what other things I also feel for Phineas. Can we at least find common ground on that and try not to argue with each other? To get along?"

Candace Five frowned and snorted. "I don't know how you're expecting me to get along with someone who regularly commits incest with her own brother" she replied. "But by all means, do enlighten me. I'm sure your answer will be entertaining."

Four stared at her and opened her mouth, but then she shook her head. "You have no idea how tempted I am to walk out on you right now" she muttered.

"Then why don't you walk out?" Five said. Seriously, this whole 'holier than thou' attitude that Four kept displaying even when she wasn't outright saying she was better than Five was really getting on her nerves. How could she possibly think she had the high ground in this argument when she was arguing from incest ? "I didn't invite you here. I don't need you here. I'm sure you'll be a lot happier at home, getting up to… whatever disgusting thing you get up to with Phineas. Call me when you're done, okay?"

Her other self was quiet for a while, and Five hoped against hope that she'd managed to shut the other woman up. Then came a soft reply. A question, framed neither as an accusation, as a request for reassurance that it wasn't the case, or a deeply rooted fear, but simply asked out of curiosity.

"Do you hate me?"

Candace Five blinked. "What?"

"Do you hate me?" Four repeated. "You told me earlier that I wasn't so different from Seven. Now I'm asking you whether you are any different from her. You told me how you felt about your own brothers – that you did love them, and that was blatantly clear from how you stood up for them in front of Seven. Now I'm asking you the same question about me and my Phineas. Do you hate us for what we've done?"

Five snorted. "I certainly hate what you've done, because…"

"Not my question. Do you hate us, yes or no?" Four took a breath. "Because if you say that you do, I will leave and you won't need to see me ever again for the rest of the time you're here. You might be done with me, Five, but I'm equally done with you constantly going on and on about how awful I am and how awful Phineas is for the fact that we fell in love with each other." Five shuddered. "So if you're only going to look at me like that, we don't need to continue this conversation."

She couldn't get off that high horse, could she? Candace Four was certainly one of the most obnoxious and annoying people Five had ever met. And Other Phineas… the man who should have been her brother , no more and no less… was blind to the reality of what he was doing because he'd never grown up. Candace Five had a hard time describing them as anything other than insufferable.

But hating them? Outright despising the alternate version of herself and her brother with the vitriol she'd seen in Candace Seven? That was a thought that hadn't even occurred to her before, and it was one she instinctively rejected. Of course she didn't hate them. Alternate Phineas was still a version of her brother, and he'd done everything to bring her home when she was trapped here. And as for Candace Four, she might have been a good deal more annoying than Phineas had been, but even when it came to her Five couldn't bring herself to ascribe to her the kind of motives that Seven undoubtedly would. Four wanted her life back too, no matter how insane it was, and she cared about her (twisted) family in a way that no doubt felt real to her. She may have made some major mistakes that she was stubbornly refusing to see – Dr. Baumer had often told her that her stubbornness was her greatest flaw, and although she'd always refused to believe that about herself, it definitely held true for Candace Four. But that didn't make the other woman evil , and possibly not even malicious.

"No," she replied, sighing. "I don't hate you."

"Thank you?" Four replied. "I mean, that's… that's good to hear." She shook her head. "You know, when I first learned about your existence, I just thought of you as an unusual version of myself – one who had somehow ended up with Jeremy rather than with Phineas."

"Sure, that's bizarre," Five said, rolling her eyes and giving her counterpart a disgusted look. "You're testing my patience here, Four."

Four gave her a look. "I promise you, I'm getting somewhere with this. So basically, after learning that I looked up your brother, and yes, I did try to talk him into hooking up with you. It wasn't something I should have done, and I don't want to do it anymore now – not really, anyway. I stopped wanting that when I found out how different you were from me, and how much you'd hurt my Phineas…"

"Can you just get over that already?" Five exclaimed. "I said I was sorry, okay? What do you want me to do, kneel before him and beg for forgiveness? Get to the point!"

"I'd get there if you didn't keep interrupting me!" Four snapped back. "Anyway, after that I only felt disdain for you, especially given that conversation we had between our minds before swapping back, and I haven't been able to stand you ever since you got here. But you know what? It's easy to villainize someone when she does nothing but rail against you and your brother and basically against everything in my life. It makes everything nice and easy, black and white." Five rolled her eyes – classic Four, typecasting her as the bad guy because that woman had the introspective qualities of a cartoon villain.

"But it's not that simple when that someone does something human," Four continued. "Like you did by standing up for your own brothers earlier, and by admitting that you didn't hate me or Phineas just now. Because it forces you to admit that maybe that other person has reasons for their actions, and maybe she can be brought back and you can heal the wounds between them once she's explained them. And that's difficult – well, for me , not for Phineas, because he'll see the redemption potential in a person even where there is none, like with Seven. But I'm willing to do it with you."

" That's your story?" Five exclaimed, agitated. "That you want me to explain why I can't just be happy with the fact that another version of me is committing one of the most immoral crimes imaginable, with our little brother , and you think that once I have you can just talk me into agreeing with that?" She shook her head. "You're crazy, Four. I guess I already knew that, but you just confirmed it for me."

Four clenched her fists in irritation. "I'm not going to yell back at you" she said softly. "I… I know by now that that doesn't help one bit." Five caught the implication that that was something Phineas had taught her over the course of their incestuous relationship, and was seriously considering getting out of the room to get away from all this nonsense. "But no, what I wanted to say to you was that I don't want you to get together with your world's Phineas, not anymore. I know he's not right for you. And yes, I want to ask you that if you can admit that you don't hate us, whether you can take another step and at least tolerate us. I know you're not going to approve, but can you just tolerate us, for the couple of days that it'll take Phineas to get you back home?"

Candace Five frowned, wondering whether Four was serious about this 'no longer wanting her to end up with her Phineas' thing but deciding to focus on the infinitely more aggravating part of what she'd said. "Of course you would ask me that," she replied. "And I have no doubt that if I say 'no', then you're going to walk away feeling entirely right about yourself because I'm a horrible person who can't even tolerate you. But guess what, Four – some things just aren't meant to be tolerated. Some things such as incest."

"Why not?" Four retorted. "What arguments could you possibly have against us that I don't already know? Like I said before, I am you. If I can go beyond putting up with it and actually engage in it, then the least you can do is put up with it. Unless there are arguments in your universe which make relationships like mine and Phineas' a far greater wrong than they are in this dimension."

"You are not me" Five hissed. "Yes, we may have shared a background once, but you… you don't know how similar and dissimilar we are, deep down, because we haven't exchanged all that much about our backstories. So don't tell me that I should be able to do something because you did it too, because otherwise your stories about not wanting to force me into doing this thing with my own brother aren't worth one cent. Don't forget that Three and Seven share a universe , and they made… entirely different life choices." Unlike before, she was not ready to say that Seven had made the better life choices, but she would be darned if she let Three off the hook for that.

Candace Four shrugged. "True, but we're still Candace Flynn. We have the same appearance, the same name, the same brothers, and I think we have the same parents – Lawrence Fletcher and Linda Flynn-Fletcher? And your biological father was Andrew Flynn?" Five begrudgingly nodded. "And I know you said earlier that you grew up at Maple Drive as well. So with all that compiled, you have to admit that we come from similar backstories, and I would guess that that extends to having the same morals across the universes. So what I'm asking you again – why do you think what I'm doing is so incredibly wrong that you can't even get over it enough to get along with me?"

"You know why incest is wrong, Four" Five replied. "Or at least, you should know. You're - we're lactose intolerant, for goodness' sake, and that's a hereditary defect! It creates birth defects like that and…"

"No it hasn't, not with Xavier and Amanda at least" Four replied. "What you're trying to say is that there's a greater chance of it creating birth defects, but what with Phineas and Ferb being around to work their magic that was never likely to happen." "No it hasn't, and no it doesn't anyway," Four replied. "What you're trying to say is that there's a greater chance of it expressing latent defects that are already present in Phineas and I. But we had genetic testing done, and we had them checked before they were even fetuses, long before anything could have happened anyway. And you know what? Everything seems to be just fine. Even the lactose intolerance, which you might have been right about, was repaired long before they so much as had a conscious thought at all."

"Right, because that's the mature way to solve a problem like this, to unleash their absurd physics-defying inventions on it" Five muttered. "But even if your… your kids with him are healthy, it's still morally wrong. You know there's a taboo against it, and that taboo is there for a reason."

Candace Four chuckled. "I knew you'd say that. But you didn't think about what that reason might be, did you? Did it ever occur to you that the reason that moral prohibition was instated all those years ago was precisely because of that risk of birth defects – a risk we've managed to overcome? And you know, the same moral rules say that you should love everyone."

"Don't try to play semantics with me, Four" Five snapped. "Since when did you become an expert on theology? Since when do you have the authority to tell why something is wrong or not? Is that who you are now? Saint Candace, patron saint of incest ?" She made sure to push the word out with all the disdain she felt for it.

"Since when did you become the most religiously observant person in the world?" Four snapped back. "You're not saying any of this because you have genuine moral objections and you know it. You simply don't like me being with Phineas. But if you must know – yes, I know it's just my interpretation, but a large part of theology is interpretation. Not everything is spelled out."

Five snorted, still unable to understand how Four could see any interpretation like that as being anything but the wishful thinking that it was. But in the end, as much as she felt that her moral case was strong, she knew the other woman wouldn't agree (biased as she was) and she… well, she hardly had an entirely argument prepared to talk people out of something as ridiculous as incest . Not to mention that Four's own side-comment had given her an opening anyway. "No, I don't like you being with Phineas" she agreed. "I don't understand how anyone who claims to be me , like you just did, could possibly have abandoned Jeremy for our annoying, immature, triangle-headed little brother! Care to explain that to me?"

Candace Four shrugged. "I would, but I doubt I'd convince you. I suppose that's where that whole 'tolerance' thing comes in. If you are willing to be tolerant, then you just have to accept that I chose a different partner in life than you did – the way I'm supposed to accept it from you. It's not like either of us will have to interact with each other ever again after you get home, so it shouldn't be that hard to do for a couple of days, at most ."

"Oh, please, like those two situations are at all similar" Five scoffed. "Jeremy and I have a mature, normal, sensible relationship because I've been in love with him since we were kids. He's perfect in every way, and he's managed to give me the life of an adult . A normal life. And what's life like with Phineas, on the other hand? He's not someone we've ever loved in that way, if you still insist on our backgrounds being the same, because he was an immature dork. I know myself and I know my brother, and I know I'd never have fallen in love with him, sibling or not. And let's not forget that in your dimension, he still builds all these impossible and irresponsible things, and you're condoning it rather than stopping it!

You have to hide your relationship, you think your little brother is flawless, and neither of you have grown up to face the real world ! The reason I'm not capable of treating your relationship the same way I treat, say, Kevin's relationship with her husband, is because yours is a joke !"

Four shook her head. "I hope that Phineas will be grateful for me putting up with you like this" she murmured.

"I'm sure he will be" Five replied, rolling her eyes and leaning back on her mattress, feeling the wall against her back. She glanced over at the door at exactly the same time Four did, and they exchanged a surprised look before both glancing down again. By now, it had become apparent that for some reason, neither of them were going to leave this conversation. Four obviously still held hopes that she could talk Five into her disturbing ideas, and Five… well, Five didn't know why she stuck around, really. Maybe she was just bored.

Four finally sighed. "If this was an impulsive decision I made, I'd understand you" she replied. "Isabella felt much the same way when she found out about me and Phineas. But we've been together for twenty-five years now. Do you get that, Five? A quarter century ? I know you find it revolting but I'm in love with him, and I will be in love with him until the day I die. Don't you think I did everything I could not to fall in love with and get together with my brother? Of course I did. I had the same concerns you had, and the same revulsion you felt, so I'm not going to blame you for feeling like that. But it's my life now, and I wouldn't want to change it for the world. And as for Phineas and Ferb, they have talents for inventing. Talents that Three apparently has too, but that I could never have… but that doesn't mean that we should be telling them not to use them. They may be dangerous at times, but that doesn't make them any less useful for them, for us, for everyone. They're gifts , Five. And they've been using them all their life. And I've been in a relationship with the man I love for most of my life now. If you can't accept that, if you can't tolerate that, at least stop treating it like a joke and take it seriously."

"I…" Five replied. "I won't…" She wanted to say that she would never do that because it was ridiculous, but when she saw the expression in Four's eyes something inside her kept her from doing that. Why did she have to be so faint-hearted even among these evildoers? Why did she have to give in, time and time again?

Well, she was the mature one. Maybe it was reasonable for her to approach even such an unreasonable version of herself with kindness and patience and try to patiently explain what she should never have to explain to another version of herself – that hooking up with Phineas just wasn't done. "I can't tolerate you" she finally whispered. "Even if I wanted to. And you know why, Four? Because I know that my life is the right one – the only right one for any Candace Flynn. Because Jeremy Johnson is the best thing that ever happened to me, and our relationship is healthy, and I'm not going to let you or little me talk me out of that!"

"One?" Four said, frowning. "She talked to you, too? What did she say?"

"That's none of your business," Five hissed. "Unless you somehow turned her against me, because under no reasonable circumstances would a younger version of myself ever say things like that about Jeremy and about my relationship with him! Candace One should have known that our lives were perfect, until you started getting her to doubt that! And when I tried to help her deal with it, when I helped her protect herself from incest , she snapped against me!"

Four snorted. "Oh, I can see what happened now. Did you really think that talking to a version of ourselves and telling her how to behave was ever going to work out? She's us too, you know. And if there's one thing consistent about us along the timelines, it's that when someone forces us to do something, we fight against it with all our power."

"That might apply to anything else, but not to… to this!" Five exclaimed. "Not when it comes to helping her protect herself against something she'd never want to happen, and she's too blind to see that she doesn't need to do it on her own! She has to see that after seeing what… well, what you did, and what Three and Six did, I could hardly trust any other version of myself to end up like me, but she utterly refused to budge! Nothing I said helped – not about Jeremy, not about little Suzy, not even about Phineas' stupid love song!"

Candace Four frowned. "Phineas' stupid love song?" she repeated. "You don't mean Gitchee Gitchee Goo, do you?"

"So what if I do?" Five replied. "It occurred to me while standing in an elevator during Christmas season last year that that song sounded awfully romantic, and Phineas couldn't give me any platonic explanations for why he'd sung it that way, because he didn't precisely remember. That's another one of those stupid incidents which neither of us would have ever thought twice about if not for you and your brother putting those ideas into my head."

Four snorted. "That's your take on this? Really? Because that song existed in my universe, too, and I'll tell you one thing – my Phineas knows that that was a romantic song. He didn't realize it at the time because those urges were subconscious, but he does now. And even if your Phineas eventually ended up falling in love with Isabella, that doesn't mean he couldn't have had a subconscious unsiblinglike affection for you at the time. I mean, that's basically what you argued to Candace One, right?"

Candace Five froze. She… she'd been reluctant to raise the subject of Gitchee Gitchee Goo to Candace Four's face, but she hadn't thought the other woman would draw quite those conclusions from it. And yet… yes , that was exactly what she had argued to One. And yes, if they truly were so similar, Other Dimension Phineas suggesting that that song had been rife with implications of his feelings for his sister also meant that that might well apply to her own brother. And if she was a rational person, she would admit that to Four.

She nodded.

"So, does that mean you think your brother is a freak?" Four asked, all too casually. "If he was willing to sing a love song with you because of feelings he had for you?"

" No " Five replied firmly, gritting her teeth. "It does not mean that. Because my world's Phineas might have felt like that at one point, but he doesn't, not anymore. He got over those feelings. It… it might have been unusual, to have my brother be subconsciously attracted to me, but… it's not the same." She wasn't disgusted by her own brother, she didn't want to be disgusted by her own brother… especially not when she hadn't seen anything wrong in that song at the time, when she knew now that she probably should have. "You said so yourself. Phineas might have once had feelings for me, but he got over them. He's in love with Isabella now."

"Ah, I see" Four said. "You don't blame your brother, but you do blame mine? You do blame me? Isn't that, you know, a little unfair ?"

"You…" Five stammered. "You shouldn't have done something with those feelings, even if you had them. You should have known to restrain them and get over them because we could get over them and it's incest …"

"Maybe" Four replied, shrugging casually as if they were discussing whether she should have gotten an extra bottle of milk from the store rather than making a major life choice. "But I told you that you didn't have to approve – but even if what I do disgusts you that doesn't mean that you have to dislike me, or yell at me all the time. Three and I disagree on many issues too – maybe not quite as fundamental as the ones on which you and I disagree, but we at least get along. So I suppose I'll just ask you straight-out, aside from leaving Phineas, is there anything I can do to get you to like me? Anything at all?"

Candace Five opened her mouth to reply. Paused. And then… considered it, for a moment. Four was casting her in the unreasonable position again, but… well, she wasn't wrong this time around, per se. Because when Four put it like that, it did sound… maybe not unreasonable, but a little over the top. Incest was gross and disgusting and a huge roadblock, but she'd been able to admit that Four was a decent person at heart, and so was her brother. She didn't hate them. She was going to leave this place in a week, and even if the thought of incest would haunt her relationship with her brother for the rest of her life thanks to these people, it wasn't like they'd meant for that to happen. (Well, Four had probably done so at the start, but she said that she no longer craved that now and for some reason Five was inclined to believe her. Heck, getting along with Phineas and Candace Four might even be helpful in getting that sibling relationship between her and her own brother away from romance and hatred and back to the normal, healthy relationship she desperately wanted it to be.)

So why couldn't she just get along with them, and try to move on from this huge dividing line that separated them?

"Stop acting so high and mighty around me," she finally replied. "You say that you want us to get along, but you're not always contributing to that yourself, Four. I…" She sighed. "I suppose I could get along with your brother. I did, as a matter of fact, come pretty close to that last year. But it's somehow more difficult with you."

Four nodded. "That seems to be the pattern with us" she replied. "Phineas is much better at this than I am." Candace Five wanted to argue against that because it was clearly something Four had said because of her deranged feelings for Phineas Four, but… well, it didn't feel right to inflame the argument again like that. "But… yeah, you're right. I've been far too upset around you too. Like I said so many times, we're not so different as we think we are. And to see a person who is me, but who rejects everything I do like that, was just… hard. I didn't see that coming."

Five snorted. "You were surprised to meet a version of yourself who wasn't with your brother? You can't have been surprised by that."

"That's what Three said." Four smiled. "I just figured that after all the work Phineas put into getting us together, and how hard I'd fought back at first, those difficulties couldn't be strong enough to put off any version of him from trying, and succeeding, because our relationship was so impossible in our reality and it still happened, so it seemed so bizarre to me that another Phineas could not want that… and then achieve that."

"Four, that's… that's enough." Five shook her head. "I get the picture." She looked up at her counterpart. "I… I don't approve of this. I'll neverapprove of this. But I suppose that… yes. I will try to tolerate you. As long as you just shut up about it."

Four smiled. "Fair enough. That's all I can ask from you, really."

"Glad to hear you've got enough self-awareness to realize that." Five tried to add a little contempt into that line, because what Four was doing really was bad, and she still believed that it was… but she couldn't quite bring herself to do that to the other woman. Not to mention that it wasn't right or rational to treat anyone like that, no matter what they'd done, and obviously it was counterproductive. "I… I don't… dislike you. Not anymore. But I'm still going to think you're a freak, and I don't think you can reasonably expect anyone to think otherwise. What you're doing…" She shook her head. "It's crazy. Absolutely crazy."

"I know," Four replied light-heartedly. "I've known that since the day I started it. And I'm used to it by now, I guess. You can call me crazy if you want to – just don't call Three that. She's got issues with that word. For whatever reason, she's obsessed with the thought of being the odd one out. For inventing, for Phineas, and for so many other reasons."

Five rolled her eyes. "You're hardly one to talk about being obsessed, considering how obsessed you've been with not being like her ever since she got here. Even now you won't shut up about her."

"That's not…" Four started, but then she reconsidered and shook her head. "I suppose that's kind of true. I have been insecure around her, but… well, I found out that she hardly deserved it. You know she can build things the way Phineas and Ferb can, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know." Candace Five said, wondering where Four was going with this. Since those were skills the other woman also lacked, she doubted that Four was planning on trying to convince her of that , too, but you never knew. "So what? It's crazy."

"It is," Four agreed. "It's also something she needs to do, because it's wired into her brain in a way that makes her physically sick when she doesn't. She told me that this one time, she'd been stuck in… I think it was a storm cellar? For over a day, and she'd been vomiting and dealing with killer headaches before it was all over, just because she couldn't invent stuff. And her Phineas…" She shook her head. "Anyway, you get the point. And apparently, it's like that for her entire family."

"That's…" Five had certainly been frustrated by Three many times over the course of this journey, if not to the same extent as she had been by Four, but she'd never born any ill will towards the other woman. "That's harsh. Wow." She frowned. "Isn't there anything they can do about that, though? What with her and Phineas and Ferb being capable of doing all these impossible things."

"Apparently not," Four replied. "Until she met me, she thought that this thing was something that just happened if you had the inventing gene, and that every Candace across the multiverse should be able to do it. Which wasn't true, of course, but apparently as far as she knows those withdrawals are part of life as an inventor, and she nor Phineas and Ferb can do anything to change them."

Five snorted. "Figures. Phineas and Ferb can always fix everything, except for the stuff that truly matters."

There was resignation in her voice, but not outright hostility or contempt, and Four didn't respond in any greater way than raising an eyebrow. "Don't push it, Five."

Candace Five sighed and shook her head. "I won't" she murmured. "But you've got to admit that it would be really useful if they could fix that kind of stuff, too. Even if they're the only ones who are suffering from it. Well, them and Candace Three."

"I suppose so," Four agreed. She shook her head. "I wonder what that's like? Waking up every morning knowing that you have to build something impossible before the day is out or go completely insane?"

"I guess they can deal with it because inventing is, you know, kind of their thing" Five said. "Obviously in emergencies like the one you've described it becomes a problem, but from what I've seen of Three I have no doubt that she and her brothers are still building stuff all the time in their stupid…" She sighed, catching the expression on Four's face. "In their reckless, but sometimes useful and in their case necessary ways."

She smirked at Four, who rolled her eyes. " Very well said" she replied. "But even without the sarcasm – you can't deny what Phineas and Ferb have built here, can you? I'm not saying that every product Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated creates is perfect, and there is definitely a lot of stuff they build that we can't share with anyone because it is dangerous, but… well, take the formula they created to generate healthier food, for instance. Or flying cars . Still largely in the testing phase, mind you, but they're around. It's all thanks to Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, and to Phineas and Ferb and the great staff who work here." She rolled her eyes. "With one or two exceptions."

Candace Five decided that it would be wisest here not to contest Four's rose-tinted view of the situation at Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. At least she was admitting that Phineas and Ferb's inventions could be dangerous, which was more than she'd expected to get out of the woman at first. "That exception… that's Phineas' secretary, right?" she asked. "Kirsty, I believe?"

"That's right" Four replied, before suddenly furrowing her eyes. "Wait a minute… how do you know her name? Did you talk to her?"

"I…" Five stammered, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and angry with herself for feeling embarrassed about something she had no need to feel embarrassment about (well, maybe a little). "Yes, I suppose I did have a brief conversation with her yesterday afternoon."

"I knew it!" Four exclaimed triumphantly, leaving Candace Five to wonder how she could have possibly known that. She leaned over, a strange glittering in her eyes that reminded Five of a journalist on the trail of a news story. (Huh, that was a weird metaphor. Maybe she'd been catching unconscious vibes from Kevin somehow.) "And what did you two talk about? Was it Phineas ?"

Five hesitated, but then decided that she would not be intimidated or pushed into feeling guilty again. "Yeah, we talked about how she felt about Phineas… and I might have given her a bit of a push there" she replied. "Like I said before, don't pretend it's any different from what you did in your universe, Four. I'll try to tolerate… your and Phineas' thing now, but you're not going to stop me from thinking that being with Phineas is wrong for you."

"Sure, so it's fine for you to break us up?" Four said, obviously agitated again. "I may have done some… questionable things in the other dimension, especially when I was still getting used to how different everything was, but I didn't go this far. So the relationship I've had for twenty-five years, the kids that were born and raised in it… all that can be cast to the wayside just because you think Phineas and I are better off apart?"

"Phineas didn't tell me about you worrying so much about my kids when you tried to come between us then" Five snapped. "But yes, I did think about what I was doing. And I knew it probably wasn't going to work anyway. And like I just said, I changed my mind, while you still don't seem to be bothered by what you did. But even so, I still believe Phineas would be happier with someone who isn't his own sister . And I'm never going to stop believing that, Four, because if that's what you want from me then I guess this compromise we seemed to be reaching is worthless if you keep pushing me further into that direction."

"I…" Four hesitated. "You know what? You're right. I shouldn't ask you to be happy with my relationship with Phineas, and I shouldn't have tried to intervene in your or your brother's marriage. And if you promise me that you will do what you said earlier, then I promise not to do anything against your marriages again. I'm okay with letting bygones be bygones in that regard."

Candace Five was tempted to ask why Four was so insistent on getting rid of the relatively minor threat that Kirsty supposedly posed, but she supposed that that really wasn't productive towards the goal of the two of them getting along. "Fair enough" she replied. "All right, I promise that."

"Thank you" Four replied softly. "I… I just really don't want that girl to get any ideas, okay? Because it can only end badly, as Phineas and I… well, we're together." Five had no idea why the other woman was continuing to talk about a subject which she knew Five would loathe. "And if I thought it would benefit him for us not to be together – if I thought he would be happier without me – I'd let him go in a heartbeat."

Candace Five stared at her other self for a while, and then she snorted. "You're lying."

Four was quiet for a moment, but then she nodded, looking absolutely embarrassed. "I… I guess so" she replied softly. "I want to think I'd only think of his happiness, but the truth is… I'd probably do anything to keep him. I'd most likely end up clinging to him the same way I clung to Jeremy back in the day when he left me, because I haven't learned a single thing ever since."

It was so, so tempting to agree with that because Four had hooked up with her own brother in the meantime, but that obviously wasn't what she was referring to, and it would only cause further arguments. (How could not fighting with someone be so hard?) But there was something else on which Five could focus. "I never got a clear picture of how that happened, by the way" she replied. "You said that Jeremy left you? What in the world did you do to cause that ?"

"It didn't have anything to do with Phineas, in case that's what you're wondering" Four replied. "Yes, in retrospect it turned out that he was already in love with me at the time, but I didn't know that yet and it hardly influenced my actions. I… I got too paranoid. You know how worried we've always been about him leaving us because we thought… because he was perfect and so much better than we were?" Candace Five gulped, those words sounding awfully similar to the ones One had uttered. She doesn't know that, she can't know that, she's simply referring to old insecurities we've always had, she doesn't mean anything by it…

She nodded, and Four continued. "Well, when Jeremy went off to college that paranoia shot through the roof. I did everything to keep him close to me, and I tried to ward off every possible threat – but as I tried to juggle that with busting too, it backfired dramatically. Over the course of a single evening, when he was back in Danville for a few days and we were going to go on a date, I accidentally admitted in front of him that I was trying to keep him from seeing who I really was, and I hurt a cousin of his who was visiting from out of town because I thought she was a college friend who fancied him. That lead him to tell me that we should use some time apart, and well, you can guess how that ended."

Five gave her counterpart a barely perceptible nod, the blood in her veins feeling much like ice at the moment. That… that sounded far too familiar. Well, not the 'keeping him from seeing who she was' thing, she hadn't done that in years now, but the other part easily compensated for that with its familiarity. She could remember the time Jeremy had gone off to college all too well. It had been one of the most anxious years of her life, and her nerves had been stressed to the breaking point. She remembered sitting down with Jeremy a couple of times and hearing him soothe her fears, which had in turn made her feel awful since he shouldn't have had to do that.

But for whatever reason, she'd made it through it and joined him the following year, and that had been the big turning point in her life. Her relationship with Jeremy had stabilized, her brothers had toned down their inventing before stopping altogether, Ferb had gotten together with Vanessa and Phineas had finally gone off and hooked up with Isabella… her life had become normal, and she had stopped worrying about keeping Jeremy Johnson's affection.

Until now.

She shuddered at the memory of the words teenaged Candace had so carelessly thrown at her. Why had the girl refused her help? Why had she dragged up her own deepest insecurities? Jeremy loved her, she knew he did! They were together, they had kids…

He's probably only sticking around anymore 'cause of your kids anyway.

She was right, Five knew she was – no matter how hard she was trying to fight the conclusion. Why did she have to fall for Jeremy Johnson, of all people? Why had she fallen for the one person who was so much better than she was, who lead a normal life without crippling insecurities and obsessive compulsions, and who had been willing to put up with her? It might have been so much better if she'd fallen for someone on her own level, someone who was less amazing and whom she actually deserved, someone with whom she might not have been as happy as with Jeremy but where she could have at least relaxed…

She was not going to think about Phineas in this context right now. Stupid Three and Four and their stupid ideas.

But even without thinking of her brother, Candace Five was shaking all over. Four had lost Jeremy over the same arguments which Candace had always feared she would lose Jeremy over. And Dr. Baumer, that quack , had never been able to do something about them. She'd been attending his sessions for years upon end now, and she had managed to never breathe a word of any of it to her family, as difficult as it seemed, trying her best to crush it down into nothingness… but it just never went away.

"Candace?" Four's voice broke through the mental breakdown she was having inside her mind. "Um, are you all right? You're kind of zoning out there." Four frowned. "Is this about Jeremy?"

"I… yes, okay?" Five snapped. "My relationship with him isn't perfect, and there are lots of things in your story that I actually recognize, and it terrifies me! Is that what you want to hear? Well, there it is! I'm terrified that he'll leave me, because like Candace One said, he'll never permanently put up with me anyway! I'm neurotic, I'm flighty, and-and interacting with you guys has only made it worse!" She frowned. "And I suppose you're going to tell me I'm better off with Phineas, now?"

"Actually, I wasn't about to tell you that" Candace Four replied. "Look, I'm not going to lie about the fact that I'd prefer it for all of my counterparts to be with Phineas – especially since that assuages my insecurities. But I know that's not going to happen in your case, and in any case I promised not to keep pressing for it. So what I'll tell you instead is that if you're worried that Jeremy just tolerates you and doesn't really love you, the best thing you can do is just to talk about it with him."

Candace Five frowned. That wasn't the response the was expecting to get – she had to hand it to her other self, she was really making an effort to stick to their agreement here. "Okay, say that I do that" she replied. "Say that I ask him in person whether he really loves me – that I openly clarify to my husband what kind of absolute mess I am inside. What in the world could keep him from not running out on me right away?" She shook her head. "I guess it's clear that you… that you spent a lot less time with him than I did, if you think that's an option."

"I don't know," Four replied, giving her a grin which made Candace Five a little worried. "Aren't you kind of underestimating him here?"

" Under estimating him?" Five repeated. "Why would – what in the world do you mean by that ? I know how amazing he is better than anyone! Heck, it's what I've been trying to tell you for the past hour on end!"

"And yet you still refuse to let him into your confidence, because you don't think he can handle hearing what you truly worry about" Four noted. "My world's Jeremy broke up with me, yes, but he had infinite patience with me before then. If you have such strong faith in his awesomeness, shouldn't you trust him not to abandon you over asking a simple question when you've already done stuff that's much worse?"

Candace Five hesitated. "I…" She wanted to say that it wasn't true, but it kind of was, wasn't it? She was asking him a simple question. Whether he cared about her. And of course it would be totally earned if Jeremy would stand up and barge right out of their relationship immediately thereafter. It was what any other boyfriend or husband would have done.

But Jeremy Johnson wasn't just anyone. Jeremy Johnson had stuck around with her for years, no, for decades now. And she knew how kind he was to her, how patient, how loving… and heck, there were two sides to what Candace One had said earlier. Even if the main reason Jeremy hadn't walked out on her by now was because of the kids, then that reason wouldn't change even after she had showcased her failings to him and he had given a possible negative reaction. He would still be her husband, and she would still be his wife, she would just have a couple of things cleared up that she'd been wondering about for a long time.

Huh. When she put it that way, this crazy idea almost seemed like a decent one. Maybe she could walk up to Jeremy and put the question to him. Possibly sugarcoating it first, to test the waters… and maybe asking for help from someone else, for moral support as she popped the question? She might ordinarily have considered her brothers, but she had never been enthusiastic about asking Phineas and Ferb for help on romance issues and after the whole business with Phineas, she'd become even less eager to do so.

She looked up at Four, who was giving her a concerned look, and for a moment it was indisputable in Five's mind that the other woman had no other motives than concern for her. "I… maybe" she replied. "I'll think about it, okay?"

"That's a good first step" Four said brightly. "You don't need to worry about this, Five. And I know I shouldn't be telling you that because I worry about everything, but I'm going to keep pointing that out to every Candace I meet because it's true . I know what it feels like to be rattled and humiliated by a younger version of yourself, and it's no fun. But she came around and apologized to me, and maybe she'll end up doing the same to you in due time as well."

Candace Five briefly wondered what in the world that argument between One and Four had been about – well, she could guess the main subject, but not the trajectory of the discussion. And apparently One had apologized to Four first. Wasn't it typical that the versions of herself who had committed incest were apparently considered worthier of an apology by their younger self than she was? For some reason, though, she couldn't get herself riled up over that fact anymore. She supposed that she'd just become too beaten down by everything to keep complaining about it.

Or maybe she just didn't look for dark ulterior motives anymore… simply because she couldn't bring herself to outright dislike Four anymore. Not as a person, at least.

"Maybe you're right" she found herself saying. "I… you… thanks?" That last part came out sounding far more like a question than she would have ever wanted it to, but she supposed that that was all right. It was fitting for her current state, after all.

Four grinned. "Don't mention it. I'm glad that we're on somewhat better terms now." She waited for Five to give her a cautious nod in agreement before turning her eyes to the clock. "Huh, looks like it's dinner time already. We really have been in here for quite a while. I've got to go back to the basement and make sure Phineas and Ferb are managing okay – will you be fine up here?"

"Of course I will" Five replied, unable to keep herself from rolling her eyes. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, you know."

"Great. Well, see you later then." Four stood up and walked out of the cubicle. A moment later, Five watched the door close behind her.

Candace Four was… a mystery, in so many ways. An affront against nature in her creepy incestuous tendencies, someone who had started out as her main enemy from the moment they'd met, someone who had taken delight in riling her up time and time again… but also someone who had shown an unexpectedly kind and soft side over the argument they'd just had. Four's actions still disgusted Five, but she couldn't bring herself to be mad at the woman anymore. Not at her, and not at Three or Six either. And if she couldn't be mad at them, it was fair to say that Four was right and the world would be much better served by them just getting along.

Candace Five loved her brothers. Nothing could make her change that, not Seven barging in and talking about how much she would want Phineas and Ferb to suffer and die, and not Three and Four and Six telling their stories about how normal and sane it was to be in love with your own brother. She would never allow herself to contemplate those stories as anything other than the undesirable narratives they were. It didn't fit with her life, it didn't fit with everything good and moral in the world, and Five would always fight against it.

But even though she hated what they had done, Five knew by now that it wasn't necessary for that to hate Other Phineas and Candace. She didn't need to be like Seven to reject incest, and she wouldn't have wanted to be like Seven, even if that had been the only way for her to be able to maintain that incest was bad. Because Phineas Four was helping her get home, and because Candace Four had just tried to help her get over the very issues that One had brought up last night.

Sure, it was going to be difficult not to feel distinctly uncomfortable when seeing her other selves, or to yell at them for what they were doing. It would mean tolerating a romantic relationship between her other-dimensional counterpart and her own brother , after all. That was never going to be easy, and Five had no doubt that there would be moments where she'd feel that she should step in and break that promise she'd made because keeping it was simply impossible.

But she still had to try, because tolerating her counterparts without yelling at them was something she needed to do to maintain the peace around here. And to be honest, after everything she'd just been through, a small part of Candace Five also wanted to do this. To get along with them in a normal, possibly even friendly way.

Because for an insufferable incestuous freak, Four really wasn't so bad after all.


	27. The Fine Line

Silence reigned in the small room that jutted off the basement floor of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, hanging so thickly in the atmosphere that you might have assumed the room was empty. And if you thought about it a certain way, then maybe you'd be right. Of course, that 'certain way' would necessarily preclude the continued existence of Candace Seven, who did in fact exist in the sense that she was still around, at least.

In the general sense of the word, though, no, she really didn't. Once she had, of course. And then, on one fateful day, it had been decided that she didn't deserve that, so it had been taken from her. And now?

She had no parents, no beginning, no point of origin. Time travel only ever showed her spontaneously appearing for no reason at all. As far as spacetime itself was concerned, she had no business remaining around, and it was only some complex interaction between thermodynamics and quantum physics that had kept her around thus far, and that was still completely liable to change at any given moment, if someone should say anything to jar the continuum into motion, erasing its - well, its mistake .

It was not a state of pseudo-existence that lent itself very much to positive and uplifting thinking. Not that Candace Seven had ever been prone to that anyway, even in the days in which she did fully exist - and certainly not since.

She winced and gingerly touched the lump on the top of her head - the spot where that stupid How to Operate a Manual Transmission for Dummieshad hit her when she'd been shoved against the bookcase. She may not have existed, but the pain certainly did, and she'd been glad that Six had left when she did.

The last thing that she intended to do was let on to any sort of weakness in front of her enemies. And the fact that she hadn't until just now realized that Five was one of them only redoubled that intention.

Well, of course Five would be one of them - why had she ever doubted it? The idea that she, Candace Gertrude Flynn, might be allowed an ally, a partner, a friend? Of course that was crazy. It was all just another long, convoluted trick designed solely crush her even lower than she'd been crushed before. Because she obviously hadn't yet been crushed enough, and that was an issue that Phineas and Ferb had no problem attempting to resolve, unlike, say, fixing the stupid elevator or getting them home .

She'd already been strongly doubting that they'd ever let her return home anyway. At least she wasn't going to miss it that much. It'd been just over a year now since she'd decided to permanently leave behind the year she belonged - 2037 - and take up residence twenty years in the past. 2017 - not so far back that she'd run into any inconveniences, but hopefully far enough back that Phineas and Ferb would quit bothering her, for once in her life. Indeed, the year had rolled around to 2018 and she'd turned thirty-six on the same day that her replacement turned sixteen - not that that mattered much, given that she had been far away at the time.

Either way, it was just not going to be allowed. That portal had opened up and sucked her in, and it had spat her out not only in another dimension, but also twenty years in the future. She supposed it had something to do with it technically being her home time, even though she'd long made the decision to abandon it. However it had worked, she was here now , in 2038, in an alternate dimension, and once again at the mercy of Phineas and Ferb.

She was seriously contemplating the idea of just giving up again. Four's dimension was similar enough to her own, right? She could wait till night, gather up some food and other useful things, and sneak out. If the Danville Museum of Natural History was in the same place here as it was in her home dimension, and if the time machine was also in the same place (if there was even a time machine), then she could use it once more, to get out of here, to before this mess happened.

And even it wasn't there, or if the museum itself was missing, she could still get away. Sneak on board a city bus and ride as far as she could before getting noticed and kicked off, hitchhike rides from the side of the road, or even just walk until she was far, far away from this wretched place. It could work, right?

No, it would work, of course. As someone who'd done basically exactly that not once but twice before, she knew that from experience. Starting life over with absolutely nothing wasn't easy or pleasant or fun in the slightest. But she'd managed it twice before, and if Phineas and Ferb thought they could force her to be dependent on them, then she would manage it again.

Of course, if they really wanted to force that, then they just would, and there would be no stopping them. But that was just the way things went, really - if Phineas and Ferb decided to find and torture her, then they absolutely would, and there would be absolutely nothing she could do about it.

The only real saving grace she got to cling to was the fact that she didn't exist - couldn't be tracked down with fancy gadgets - but more so that she'd been replaced. Replaced by Candace Three, the spineless nitwit who'd been suckered and manipulated and twisted and brainwashed into all the perverted shapes that Phineas and Ferb had desired, and thereby mostly saving Seven herself from those same desires.

Only mostly of course, though, as this whole fiasco proved. Candace Seven supposed that having only one brainless slave just wasn't enough to keep their insatiable appetite for her suffering redirected forever. And it hadn't even apparently been Three's brothers this time?

They were in Four's dimension, which meant that it was strongly looking like the blame for this belonged squarely at Four's brothers' feet. Not that it made a real difference either way - one Phineas and Ferb was just as bad as any other. They were all the same, in Seven's view.

She was free from her own brothers - and had been for over a year now. Three's brothers or Four's, it almost didn't matter. None of them meant anything more to her then the people who'd taken her life and squashed it, crushed it, flayed it, incinerated the remains, scattered the ashes and salted the earth left behind. She wanted nothing more than to be left to live out the rest of her pathetic pseudo-existence alone.

But, of course, they would never allow such a thing.

And so Candace Seven had ended up here. Alone, again. Also in pain from the swollen lump on her head. As she'd told Six earlier - everything was just dandy . Couldn't get any better. For sure not. She was having the time of her life.

She closed her eyes and leaned back, feeling herself hiccup and wondering yet again what it would actually be like to be completely and utterly erased. She wouldn't die , per se. Instead, just like what had happened to Bad Future Candace, she would simply… cease to exist. Gone. Poof. Without a trace.

How much worse could it really be than what she was going through right now?

She hardly knew anymore. Part of her obstinately refused to entertain the notion - wouldn't want to give her once-brothers the satisfaction of it, even though, again, if they really set their minds to it, what could she do to stop them? And the answer to that question, as always, was 'not much'. Because that was a fun way to live your life. Or what was left of it after you'd painstakingly swept up the fragments that had been left you.

Her survival in general had always been in their hands, to do with whatever they saw fit. It was only because they'd apparently not yet felt 'up to it' that she'd not been entirely extinguished. Or maybe it was because they felt they could make her suffer more by keeping her around.

Or both.

Either way, none of these thoughts were serving to make her feel any better. Her head was killing her, the one person she'd thought had been an ally had turned out to be the exact opposite, her palm was still sore and extremely tender from the ragged gash that'd been cut in it yesterday. All this pain and suffering - it was reminding her a lot of her childhood.

Which, again, was something she'd thought she'd managed to leave behind.

So… what now? There was, quite literally, nothing to be done. Nothing but sit and mope and sit some more and hope that her headache went away on its own soon because it was really pounding now but she sure as anything wasn't about to let anyone else know that. And then mope some more.

She briefly tried to entertain the idea of reading something from the bookshelf, but her head just would not allow it. Not that any of the books sounded particularly interesting, but even if they had, she just couldn't get her vision to focus.

Heaving a huge sigh, she sat down in the office chair and leaned it way back on two legs against the wall, and closed her eyes, trying to breathe slowly and relax and fend off this aching pain. The hiccups really weren't helping in this process, that much was for sure. But if she could just… not think about anything. Just close her eyes and stare into the void behind her eyelids… breathe slowly and deeply… not moving, just… sitting… breathing...nothing.

She wasn't sure how much time had passed when she suddenly snapped her eyes open to the harsh, repeated sound of something banging against the door of the small room she was in. She gave a start and quickly straightened herself in the chair, wiping away the drool that had collected on her face. Thankfully, her headache seemed to have somewhat abated by now. The pounding was much softer, and although the top of her head was still tender to the touch, it was at least bearable now.

The clock on the wall was the only indicator of how much time had passed - and without windows, it almost felt unreal, in a way. That much time had passed? Well, okay. Whatever it said was what she believed. Not that she should , really… there was the fact that anything in Phineas' and Ferb's building was likely as unreliable and as untrustworthy as they were. Still, what could she do?

The banging on the door continued, and she suddenly realized that it wasn't banging at all - it was knocking , as in, someone knocking. Someone knocking because they wanted inside, apparently. Who it was? She could hardly guess.

Maybe Five come crawling back to her after getting chewed up and spit out by the others, although she rather doubted it. Maybe little One deciding that incest was not for her, and wanting to associate with the one person who could see that for how wrong it was? She rather doubted that one too.

Then who would it be? At this point, she really didn't care all that much - she just wanted to be alone. It was where she was supposed to be, after all. She was the only remaining fragment of a timeline long averted - couldn't they just leave her be? It was all she asked, really.

"Go away," she growled in the general direction of the door, to whomever was on the other side of it. "Leave me alone."

"Oh," she heard a voice say. " She's in there. Screw that - Phineas, you can get it yourself." Then footsteps could be heard from outside as someone walked away.

Candace Seven rolled her eyes. Now who was that? It could literally have been anyone, with the exception of One, because her voice was a bit higher-pitched, and Two, because her voice was… well, her voice wasn't all that different, but the way she talked was just… different, somehow. It was her tone or something. Not that Candace Seven really cared either way, but it was fairly obvious.

At the end of the day, though, it didn't matter. Two might be annoying in her own special way, but she wasn't particularly worse than any of the other Candaces. They were all bad in their own ways - some worse than others - but Candace Seven was determined to have no dealings with anyof them, and especially not with Five. Not after what she'd done, no sir.

You could forget about it.

"Alright, I got it" came faintly through the door.

She jerked her head up to face the door, and only just in time, because the very next second, who should open the door and thrust his unwanted head inside? It didn't take a genius to figure it out.

Candace Seven scrambled back to her feet, glaring daggers. "Get away from me, Phineas," she warned.

He frowned slightly - probably deciding on how best to annoy the living daylights out of her or something. That would be something she could believe. "Sorry." He smiled awkwardly. "I just need my capacitor to interact with the rate of flow of radiant energy and graviton particles. It's, uh, in that box there." He pointed, indicating a rather unwieldy looking cardboard box leaning against the far wall of the room. Candace Seven'd noticed it before, but she hadn't been much bothered by it, or cared to look inside. "Would you mind handing it to me?"

She crossed her arms, hardly able to believe the audacity. "You get it yourself, you worthless good-for-nothing."

"I…" he paused for a second, then shrugged slightly. "Okay, then, I guess."

"Okay, then, I guess," she muttered to herself, watching him cross the room and picked up the box. "He guesses ."

He turned back and looked to be heading back out the door, leaving her alone again - thankfully - when he stopped halfway across the room and turned to face her. Even just the look in his filled her with resentment and bitterness.

"Say, I meant to ask you earlier, but I never ran into you before now - you feeling alright after yesterday?"

Candace Seven uncrossed her arms, then crossed them again. "Don't your little friends need your toy? Why don't you just run back to them and leave me be?"

"Nah." He shook his head. "They can wait a few minutes for it, it's not that big a deal. So… how are you feeling? Okay?"

She rolled her eyes and gave a longsuffering sigh. "Oh, yes, Phineas , everything is just lovely . Why, thank you ever so much for asking."

He frowned again. "Are you sure? You don't, well, you don't seem alright."

Candace Seven snorted, half in disbelief and half in very much belief. Sometimes she forgot just how foolish Phineas and Ferb really were. That, along with their ridiculous flightiness and inability to concentrate on any one thing for too long had really been what saved her from them, hadn't it? "Now why would that be, I wonder?" she spat, all traces of affected sarcasm gone from her voice.

Phineas blinked, making some kind of face. "I didn't mean it like that - I'm sorry." He stopped for a second. "How… how long has it been like this?"

"Oh, let's see," Candace retorted, exaggeratedly counting on her fingers. "It seems like it's been about - oh would you look at that? Based on my calculations, it's been about none of your business ." She put one hand on her hip and point with the other at the door. "If you don't remember, then I guess you don't deserve to know. Now get out ."

"I mean, I'll go, but…" he hesitated. "I can't but get the feeling that you're upset with me. Is there - did I do something?"

If Seven had had Two's sunglasses right now, she would have been able to do that dramatic look-over-the-tops-of-them thing that Two sometimes did. Without them, though, she contented herself with staring blankly at him, hardly able to formulate a response. A hiccup ran through her body, the tingling that temporarily drowned out her other senses also serving to snap her out of the stupidity-induced trance.

"Let me count the things," she growled slowly. "Oh, no, wait - that would take all night . So why don't you walk your stupid little self back out that stupid little door and go back to doing whatever stupid little thing you're supposed to be doing - but I guess you were never really planning on doing that, were you?"

"What?" Phineas echoed. "I don't under- I mean, I can see you're upset. Is it about the anomaly thing? You know, the… being one?"

The urge to punch something was very strong right now. If Phineas hadn't been so far away, she might have tried to punch him - it wasn't like he didn't deserve it. But he was standing almost halfway across the room, and she contented herself with balling her fists and and bringing one of them down on the surface of the much nearer desk with a resounding 'thump'.

"I don't know!" she retorted vehemently. "Why don't you use your brain for once in your miserable life and think about that? Let's call it a puzzle." She lowered her eyebrows and grit her teeth. "Now why don't you just got out ? Can you not see that you're not wanted here?"

"Candace." He raised his hands slightly. "If there's something that I've done, you've got to tell me so I can have a shot at fixing it. I mean, I just had this talk with One and kind of dealt with the same issue there: no one can help something that they're ignorant of." He smiled condescendingly as the patronizing words rolled off his tongue in the manner of one who has had much practice in acting so. "If you want me to help, then you've got to make me understand."

Candace Seven was starting to see red again. She pointed at the door, her entire body beginning to tremble with rage. "No, Phineas , I will not'make you understand' because you will never understand, and I don't your 'help' anyway ! Why don't you just take the hint and get out ?! Out of this room - out of my life ! I-"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he cut in. "I didn't mean to-

"- I hate you ."

Silence hung in the room, just as her words hung in the air. But though spoken in anger, she didn't regret them. Phineas and Ferb - whether Four's Phineas and Ferb or no - represented everything she despised about her pseudo-existence, and everything she'd had so abruptly ripped away from her before. Before this whole debacle had happened, she'd felt so isolated from them that the most she could muster up was a deep undercurrent of resentment for their torture of her.

But now… now, that she'd been torn away from her third take on life, forced into contact with the people she had wished to never see or think of again, and most of all… given a brief glimpse of something bordering on friendship … only to have that snatched away too? It was too much, and that undercurrent had widened and deepened into a raging river - a river of loathing, of detestation, of abhorrence, of execration, of revulsion, of… of hatred.

A river that poured through her heart with such violence that it felt as if the flow could never be dammed.

"Can-"

She shook her head and pointed towards the door again. "Out."

Somehow it felt… almost good to admit it to herself. She was justified for this, wasn't she? Of course she was. Any rational person would have felt it long, long ago. After what she'd suffered in childhood at their hands? After being constantly degraded, beaten down, humiliated, ignored, and physically injured, over and over, for eighteen long, long years? And, most of all, after having her entire existence torn away from her? Everything she'd ever held dear or cared about in any way, shape, or form for her entire life?

It was not irrational. It was not unjustified. It was not unreasonable. Not in the slightest.

Right now, Phineas Four was the impersonation of everything vile and despicable in her life, of all her pain and torment, of all that she'd lost… and she hated him for it. She would pick up the pieces of her shattered heart and stick them back together one more time, using spite as glue and holding the whole thing together with pure, unbridled disgust and…

And hatred.

Phineas said nothing back. He picked up his box and turned around, quietly retreating from the room, shutting the door behind him. The latch clicked place with an air of finality, and the atmosphere in the small room after he left was as still as death. For a long moment or two, Candace Seven remained standing, still and unmoving, still pointing towards the door even though she was now alone.

Then the all-too-familiar tingly feeling of her hiccups came back, and she suddenly stirred to life, collapsing into the office desk chair once more, slowly releasing a pent-up breath, waiting for the hiccup to pass.

This was supposed to be the point in time in which she was supposed to be suddenly overwhelmed guilt, wasn't it? Where she was supposed to fall to her knees and cry out 'What have I done'? Maybe. And yet… she felt no such urge. What she had done, well, it had been rightfully deserved. And if she'd been honest with herself, she probably could have managed it a lot longer ago.

Still, it didn't actually change all that much. Her feelings, though graced with a new name, were mostly unchanged at the core. And her situation hadn't really changed either. She was still being forced to wait around to see if anyone felt like being useful and doing something right for once. She was still all alone, surrounded on all sides by her stupid other selves, among which she now knew numbered Five as well. That was… disappointing.

She should have seen it coming, really. She wasn't allowed nice things, remember? So yeah, there was that. In a way, that train of thought dulled the ache. Five was just like the rest of them - pumped full of manipulation and deceit, to the point where she couldn't tell up from down or, perhaps more importantly, right from wrong.

Candace Seven had still not forgotten her promise to publicly blow the lid off of Candace and Phineas Four's twisted perversion of a 'relationship'. Though she rather doubted that she'd be allowed to succeed in such an endeavour, she was still rather determined to have a go at it anyway. It was the thought that counted, right?

Candace Seven's stomach growled with hunger, reminding her that although she didn't exist anymore, her physical needs were no less real and pressing. She was supremely loath to venture out of this little office room, though. It was… well, it was nothing, really. She just didn't want to see anyone else, least of all Phineas Four.

For the last almost two years, she'd been doing everything in her power to avoid them - and any thought of them - at all costs. She'd fled the city, corrupted the spelling of her own last name, and gone back in time to live permanently, all in pursuit of one goal: being able to live out her live in peace, unbothered and undisturbed. It wasn't a lot that she asked, really.

But of course it was too much anyway. Well, whatever. She'd been the butt of so many jokes on the universe's behalf that she was pretty much expecting it by now. And heck, maybe there was a reason her luck had always been so abysmal. A certain red-haired, triangle-headed reason. She would put nothing past him at this point.

Literally nothing.

But she was hungry, and wanted to find something to eat to satisfy the pangs of hunger beginning to arise within her. Apparently she'd slept for longer than she'd at first realized. Whatever - it wasn't like she had much else to do, or that there was much else to do around this wretched place in general. The books here were indecipherable and would probably be boring anyway, the floors were stuffed with offices, and although there wasan old board game box sitting atop the bookshelf, Candace Seven didn't even stop to give it a second glance. After all, you couldn't play a board game by yourself. And she was hungry anyway.

First she would take care of that, then she would have to find something to do. Maybe prepare for her possible flight from here? Maybe try to get photographic evidence of Phineas and Candace Four behaving… in a improper way to use however she should see fit? Well, although the latter did sound a fairly attractive - and easy, after all, it couldn't be that hard to snap a picture or two.

But she was going to eat first.

Because she was hungry and, if nothing else, she was not going to let herself suffer in this way as well. If she wanted to eat, that's what she was darn well going to do, no matter anyone else should think about it. They may not consider her to be human, but she couldn't really bring herself to care at the moment.

Candace Seven stood up and paced across the small room, opening the door, and poking her head out cautiously. As she'd been hoping, there was no one in the immediate area that the door opened out into. So Phineas Four - and his brother, possibly, and Candace Three - must be over on the other side of the basement, in that laboratory-esque sort of space. It wasn't so much that she cared, really, as that she was relieved that no one was paying attention to her. All she wanted was some peace and quiet, some somber loneliness in which to gripe and be isolated.

And to eat.

She pushed the door open the rest of the way and walked quietly out. From here she could hear whatever racket was going on in the laboratory section - the racket that was thankfully disguising her presence behind the sound of metal hitting metal and sparks flying through the air and Phineas Four's voice saying 'Hand me that, will you?'

The table where they'd eaten last night was still in the middle of the room, and on top of it was spread a bunch of different foods. Candace Seven peeked left and right and decided that since no one was watching, she was just going to take some stuff. Take it and get out of here - back up the twenty flights of stairs to the ninth floor, where she could be alone.

And if not entirely alone, at least farther away from everyone. That was what she wanted, after all. Picking up a paper plate from a stack of them nearby, she scooped enough food onto it so as to not require her to come back down here again anytime soon. Carrying the heaping plate twenty flights up… would not be fun. But it would be endurable. She could handle it.

She pushed the stairwell door open with her foot and stepped out into it, sighing to herself as she contemplated the long climb ahead of her. And then starting suddenly, as she turned her head slightly and realized Candace Two was right there.

"Would you stop sneaking up on everybody like that?" Candace Seven demanded. "It's the most annoying thing in the world."

Two said nothing in response, merely staring, her eyes completely hidden behind her sunglasses, her face unmoving.

Candace Seven frowned. "I don't know what your problem is anyway. They're just a bunch of incestuous freaks. You'd better leave them alone before they such you in to." She paused and rolled her eyes. "But I guess you wouldn't particularly care, would you? I swear, no one in this building hsa their heads on straight. It's ridiculous. I mean, I shouldn't have to explain to you why it's wrong, come on!"

Two shrugged. "Committing to a romance requires time and effort. Time and effort I cannot spare." She passed her staff to her other hand. "It also requires a … certain frame of mind. That I do not possess."

"And of course, that's the only reason you have against this," Seven replied, rolling her eyes again. "I swear, you people. Can no one see how dangerous this is - how dangerous they are? I mean, seriously… you can't be like 'oh the only reason I don't commit incest is because it would take too much time ' and expect people to take you seriously."

"Not the only reason," Two responded coolly. "Most important one, perhaps - I will do whatever is necessary to keep Phineas and Ferb out of danger and safe. Incest will not do either of those things, so until then, I will not devote energy nor time to thinking about it - or to debating it with you."

Candace Seven stared for a moment at Two. "Whatever," she finally decided. "You're - you're messed up, you know that?"

"Perhaps."

"Ugh, I am so done with you. All you do annoy everyone with your constant ramblings and paranoia anyway. Phineas and Ferb don't deserve anything from us - they deserve what's coming to them, and you ought to stand out of the way and let it happen."

"Seven," Two remarked icily, the tone of her voice seeming to lower the temperature of the stairwell by at least thirty degrees. "Can it."

"I - I - ugh." Candace Seven threw back her head and groaned loudly. "Whatever."

She stalked off up the staircases, leaving Two behind at the foot. Thankfully, she knew that Two wasn't going to follow her, so she was free to mutter and complain about the disagreeable woman. Really, though, Two wasn't quite so bad as some of the others… sure, she was obsessed to an obviously unhealthy degree with Phineas and Ferb, and she was utterly blind to their true nature and ignorant of the suffering it could cause, and even stupid enough to be unable to immediately turn down the concept of committing incest.

...still, though, she hadn't done it - yet - nor had she defended it the way that Three and Four and Five and Six had. Plus, there was Kevin, but… Candace Seven was mostly indifferent to her - she was so different that she may as well have not been 'Candace' at all, which she technically wasn't, to be fair, but… eh.

She'd just finally once more completed the long slog to the ninth floor and had reached out with her foot to push the door into it open, when it suddenly opened of its own accord… and who should be standing there, but Candace Five.

Candace Seven exhaled sharply through her nose as she glared at the backstabbing woman.

"Seven!" Five exclaimed awkwardly. "Look, uh, I… about this afternoon…"

"What?" Candace Seven snapped. "Spit it out."

Five grimaced and stared down at the ground. "Look, I… I want you to know that I-"

"Want me to know what? That you're a lying traitor who really doesn't care who she hurts so long as she's alright?" Seven spat. "It's fine - I've been dealing with that all my life. I can handle it. Nothing new, after all." She hesitated just for a split second. "I mean, I thought - I thought you were different, Five. I…" Her voice trailed off slightly. This was dangerous territory - it would probably be best if she avoided it. "Well, I guess that was a mistake, then. Hmph. Good bye ."

She elbowed her way past Five and into the ninth floor hallway.

"Well - well - the same to you!" Five retorted. "I - I - don't care about you either. I'm - ugh." She stalked into the stairwell and slammed the door behind her, disappearing from view.

Candace Seven was okay with that.

For the moment, at least, it appeared she was alone. She could go back to her room and eat in solitude, the same way she'd been eating for the past year. Where was Five going to sleep tonight, she wondered as she crossed the threshold. Certainly not in here with her. She wanted nothing to do with the woman anymore, that was for absolute certain.

It kind of stung, in a way. Five had been the closest thing she'd had to an ally, a friend, in a long, long time. And of course Candace Seven had fallen for her lies. And to think, after she'd actually told Five about her family - showed her the picture, even. After last night, when she'd been the only one around to pull a distraught Five back together after that brat One had somehow gotten into her head and broken her brain.

That had been… an interesting time, last night. Five had been all screwed up in the head after that girl had gotten through with her. Whatever had been said - and Candace Seven herself had missed all but the tail-end of it - it had certainly had an effect on Five. She'd been all broken up, practically in tears.

Candace Seven hadn't cried herself in so long that she could hardly remember what it felt like. But she'd tried to help anyway, awkwardly patting Five on the shoulder and telling her not to take anything that moron said seriously - Phineas and Ferb had probably told her to come up here say whatever she'd said anyway.

And Five had explained that One had attacked her relationship with Jeremy, calling it weak and unhealthy and all sort of nasty things. Things that Candace Seven knew were the farthest from the truth, because she'd been there, once, a long, long time ago.

Jeremy was sweet, and loving, and serious, and calm, and mature, and laidback and - and everything the perfect husband should be. He was literally everything everyone should be, and in more ways than one. Many, many, many more ways.

And Candace Seven's own marriage to him had been similarly perfect, though all to brief - thanks to the two idiots who were always ready to ensure her happiness never lasted. They'd loved each other more than anything else in the world, perhaps excepting their three children, wonderful children, even.

It had all been hers.

And now it was all gone. And as she'd said to Five last night, "At least you still have that to go back to. The main thing to remember is that Phineas and Ferb are trying to manipulate you. Don't let them win - just think about it."

But it had all been for naught in the end, anyway. Because Five had betrayed her, and Candace Seven was all alone in a hostile world once more. Ah, well - what else was new? This? Most certainly not.

She'd said that very thing last night to Five, in fact. "The sooner you realize exactly what kind of people Phineas and Ferb really are, the better you'll feel - you'll realize that all those things that you thought were your fault weren't yours at all."

Blame was a fickle thing, but if placed appropriately, it could be useful as well. And Candace Seven had seen the light - she'd placed the blame where it belonged. She'd done all she could in that regard. But the others, they'd see.

One would grow up, slowly and painfully, and she would see.

Two would see.

Three and Four and Six would realize that bowing to Phineas' perverted desires wouldn't save them forever.

Five would see that refusing to take a stand against them the way Candace Seven had wasn't going to inspire them to have mercy upon her.

Kevin… well, Candace Seven didn't know quite what to think there, but if she had brothers, then the same thing applied.

And when the house of cards the other Candaces were hiding under collapsed, Candace Seven would laugh and laugh and laugh some more. She was right, and she knew it. Her attitude was reasonable, her feelings were justified.

The other Candaces were just blind and naive and foolish. And possibly terrified of their brothers and thus caving to them out of fear. But that didn't matter - because they had caved, and the instant that happened, was the instant Candace Seven lost all respect for them.

And one day, they would see.

Candace Seven ate her meal in silence, unbothered by anyone or anything. The solitude wrapped around her like a blanket. And you know what?

She liked it that way.


	28. Trouble Magnets, One

Candace Three was really starting to wonder whether she was, in fact, a trouble magnet. It really did seem like it sometimes, especially in the two days that she'd been in Dimension Four. How else you could explain it? In less than forty-eight hours, she'd gotten yelled at by One, by Two, by Four, by Five, and by Seven. Really it just made her wonder when it was going come time for Candace Six or Kevin to explode on her too. And knowing that Candace Six did still have that gun… it wasn't something she was looking forwards to.

But for all of that, it wasn't all bad. If she was lucky, then she still might manage to scrape out of this with more pleasant memories than unpleasant. Of course, knowing her luck, that was never going to happen anyway, but… you could always hope, right?

At the very least, it seemed that withdrawals weren't going to be an issue during this whole thing. That was lucky for sure - she didn't know how she would've been able to deal with that otherwise. Phineas and Candace Four were understanding enough, but they couldn't really know what it was like without experiencing it and… well, Candace Three knew from experience that it wasn't worth it.

Either way - it wasn't going to be an issue because she had plenty of stuff to do here. Even now, she was busily working on spacetime flux charter equations, trying to map a potential course for a dimensional portal to take. Normally this wouldn't be nearly so difficult, but the continuum was being really stubborn for some reason. There were tremendous scars and gashes in the barriers, and the flux waves were incredibly agitated for some reason. It was as if something had taken the entire fabric of reality and wrapped it around a pole and stretched it like a cheap rubber band. And it was proving exceptionally annoying. Normally, she'd have Phineas to help - her Phineas. And if it was really hard, then there was also Amanda and Xavier. And Ferb.

But here? There was no one. Well, except Phineas Four and Ferb Four. Either way, the point remained. And it was especially poignant now, given that they both had gone off somewhere, leaving her alone in the lab.

Only the sound of her pencil scratching the blueprints broke the silence of the lab. She was so close, she could almost feel it. Just tweak the variables a little more, and she'd have it. Maybe by the time Phineas Four got back. Well, that might be a bit optimistic, but you never knew, right?

She was concentrating pretty hard, though, and completely missed out on hearing the footsteps that were hesitantly approaching her from behind.

"Three?" someone asked.

She started slightly, and her pencil made a long streak off the side of the paper onto the wood of the desk beneath. She turned her head, and saw Candace One standing behind her, shifting from one foot to the other with her hands behind her back.

Almost instinctively, Candace Three felt herself stiffen and a creeping dart of nervousness shot into her gut. It was silly, really - she knew that One had apologized, that everything should be alright between them, but she still couldn't help being slightly stressed out by the teenager's sudden appearance behind her.

Which was irony all in itself, really - here she was, a fully-grown woman whose first instinct on seeing a fifteen-year-old was fear . Perfect testament to how messed up she was, really. She just wanted to get through one day without breaking down. This wasn't how her normal life was - not that her 'normal' life was normal at all - but, as hard as it might seem to believe, she was a capable, fully-functioning adult in a relationship that she was fully committed to and had always thought of as healthy, at least.

"What is it - you need something?" The question came out perhaps a bit more timidly than she would have liked, even though she did her best.

One swallowed. "I was… just watching you. And thinking."

"Oh." Candace Three hesitated. "About what?"

"You know." One gestured to the whole of the laboratory area with a broad sweep of her hand. "The, like, the whole inventing thing. That you do. You really can do it, can't you?"

Three nodded. "I can." Really, it should have been rather obvious by now… but she supposed that One at least deserved the benefit of the doubt, especially when she recalled how she had been at that age.

"How - how does that even work ?" the girl asked. "Do you really think I can do it too?"

Candace Three hesitated again. (It seemed to be becoming a pattern here. Which may not be entirely bad, after all, she sometimes did have issues with impulsively blurting things out.) The answer of 'Yes, of course.' was right on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't quite bring herself to say it with the same conviction that she'd once had about the matter.

She was the weird Candace, after all - not necessarily about Phineas , since apparently that was less weird than it might at first seem, at least from a multiversal perspective, but definitely about the inventing, especially given that she was actually the only one who could even do it all.

It was still difficult to wrap her thoughts around. Inventing was in the Flynn blood - all of them. At least, that was what she had always thought. But apparently, it was only that way in her dimension? Or, by some grand cosmic coincidence, every other Candace that she'd met - even Seven, who actually was her specifically - had somehow smothered their gift and all had also failed to ever recover it? That was… kind of hard to believe, though. She supposed that the most logical explanation was she was the outlier about yet another subject. It was not something she was not used to, at least.

But Candace One was awaiting an answer. She thought for a second more about what to say. "I… don't know." Well, that wasn't very helpful at all. "Why - why don't you come here for a second?" And she waved the girl over to her desk.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," Candace Three replied with a shrug. She slid one of her papers across the desk's wooden surface until it was in front of the girl. "Does it, like, ring a bell or something?"

Candace One frowned, staring intently at the paper for a few moments. At last, however, she sighed and looked up. "No." She shook her head. "I mean… yeah, no, not really at all."

"Mmm." Candace Three tried to recall the days from twenty-one years ago when she'd been the one in One's shoes, unable to interpret the things done by her brothers. It had been a long time since then, but she could still remember it pretty well. Breaking down that wall had not come easy - it had taken, well, it had taken what she thought at the time was pretty much the death of her brothers, and even then, it hadn't come easily.

Part of that, of course, was due to withdrawals setting in, trying to make her mind and body 'make up' for lost time. Which she once would have assumed was inevitable, but having since met Phineas Four who claimed that he had dealt with no such thing… well, it was possible that it was just a thing from her dimension. Kind of like how the Perry from this dimension was supposedly a 'secret agent' of some sort? Candace Three wasn't even sure how that was supposed to work .

But that was the thing with alternate dimensions, she supposed. And there were a lot of things that she didn't understand about Dimension Four. She could rather see how Candace Four could be unable to invent like her brothers. After all, Three herself hadn't been able to for the longest time - almost seven years - and she guessed that if that last of day of summer of 2017 had played out differently, if she had not turned on the experimental Do-Over-Inator thing that Vanessa's dad had had in his house, then she might not have figured it out either. How Phineas and Ferb Four somehow didn't have withdrawals was not something she could really comprehend, though. That was like the one constant of the inventing gift - you had to use. It altered your brain at a basic level, really, to the level that weaning entirely off it would take decades . If you were able to invent, you would also have deal with withdrawals.

That was just the way the world worked, right?

Candace Three still remembered the first time Amanda had run afoul of them. It was probably something she or Phineas should have seen coming, to be fair, although neither of them were very experienced with the whole 'parenting' thing at that time. They were doing their best, but one day, a few months before her sixth birthday, Amanda had come down with the flu, and been restricted to bed.

It was something that Phineas and Candace had had to deal with many times before - rather inconvenient, really, having to build something when you were sick, but it usually wasn't so bad. For Amanda, though, still a very young child, having never tangled with the symptoms before, it had doubtless been terrible. And it had terrified Candace herself - she was barely twenty-nine at the time - because at first they hadn't been able to figure out what was going on. After that experience, when Xavier'd been born, she and Phineas had taken very special care to ensure that he never had to go through the same thing. (He'd never gotten in trouble with them at all, actually, that Candace had seen, which was unusually lucky for him - definitely something he could thank his sister's experience for.)

But even despite aaaaall that, here in Dimension Four, withdrawals were just… not a thing. And so why should she assume that they were Dimension One? They could very well be nonexistent there too, or even be more extreme, perhaps. (Although Candace wasn't sure if that was very well possible.)

In fact, given that Candace One had been here just about the same length of time that Candace Three herself had, and had neither unwillingly built anything nor attempted to bust nor broken down into a mental wreck over the lack of ability to do either… well, that meant one of two things: either she really didn't have the gift, or withdrawals were similarly not a thing in her universe either.

Both options were equally alien to Three's mind, really, but there was no way around them, either.

"What is it?" One asked, breaking off the train of thought.

"I…" Three tilted her head slightly. It suddenly occurred that she had recovered her ability when she had been forced to - to save her brothers' lives. Candace One was at the last day of summer of her fifteenth year, too, only… she wasn't being forced to do anything. If Candace Three herself had run into different versions of her brothers twenty-one years ago, and they had done all the work and taken her along for the ride, then she may have not recovered her ability either.

...well, not necessarily, since it would have likely become an issue when she tried to move out and Phineas and Ferb's proxy inventions were removed. Of course, given her relationship with Phineas now, that would not have happened either - she wouldn't have lost the proxy at all. In fact, she might have turned out an awful lot like - like Candace Four.

Huh. Now there was an interesting thought. Of course, it straight-up didn't account for Candace Five and Dimension Five, in which even Phineasand Ferb had quit inventing as they grew up.

So, really, there were a lot of things she didn't understand. After the events of the past day or two, though, she was inclined to trust Candace Four. And if Candace Four claimed she couldn't invent, well, neither could Two or Five or Six or Seven - which was really weird, too - or Kevin. And when you thought about it like that, the only real conclusion was one as old as time. Or at least as old as she was.

That being, of course, that Candace Three was, as always, the outlier. Her whole dimension was - she really was just that weird.

So what about One, then?

"Have you ever built anything like your brothers? Anything at all?" Three finally settled on asking.

One snorted. "Not hardly. You - well, I guess you wouldn't know, at any rate, but no."

Candace Three frowned. " Nothing ?" She was pretty sure that even when she hadn't been able to really invent as a child, she'd still done somethings - things that had tipped her brother off to what was going on, no less. But she would have to remember those things. Uh.. "Do you remember a time - a time when Phineas and Ferb built that giant computer in the backyard?"

"Yeah?" One replied. "You mean the one that could tell you anything, or whatever? I mean, it could tell me how many fingers I was holding up behind my back. How does that even work ?"

"It worked through an intelligent au-" Candace Three cleared her throat. "Never mind. It - it doesn't really matter anyway. The point is, I'm prettysure that on that day, I ended up building something."

"So what?" One echoed. "I mean - that's… that's what you do, right?"

"No, not always." She stopped to shake her head. "Definitely not always - for a long time, I was just like, well, you, I guess. I couldn't - at least, I thought I couldn't - do anything on Phineas and Ferb's scale. And they built that computer during that time - and I still built a thing. Do you remember anything like that?"

"I…" One's voice trailed off in thought. "I mean, I guess I did." She frowned. "It was like a little toaster mirror thing?"

"Exactly." Candace Three nodded. "So you did do it too."

"What does that prove, though?" Candace One said. "I don't know how that thing worked, and I definitely couldn't remake it. I mean, the only reason I could pull it off at all was because I had that computer telling me what to do and what not to do."

"Yes," Three agreed. "You did - and so did I. But, I mean, that doesn't change anything, really. You've not, I assume ever taken any lessons in mechanical engineering or even in DIY stuff. And even though the computer was telling you what to do and even how to do it - you were still the one who did it. And of course, the computer was omniscient and knew exactly what to say to get you to do it correctly, but you still did it."

"I - I guess so?" One agreed hesitantly. "Still, though, come on - it was a pop-up mirror inside a toaster . Phineas and Ferb built a giant computer . That somehow knew everything . You can't really compare the two. At all. I mean, I used like a whole roll of tape to keep it together, too."

"Fair enough," Candace Three admitted. "But you can't at least deny that you are capable of building things? I mean, Candace Four can't do like Phineas and Ferb either, but she can too, at least on that scale."

One sighed. "I suppose… but that's not really even what I was talking about - you know that, though."

"I know, I know." Candace Three paused, trying come up with some easy solution to the problem, but none would come. "I guess the thing is, until you have sufficient motivation, we'll never know." She hesitates slightly, somewhat unwilling to divulge to the girl more details of her own past after this morning, but eventually rolled her eyes and continued anyway. "See, the thing with me was that in my dimension, there's withdrawals if you don't invent. Like, Phineas and me and Ferb and-" she suddenly stopped short, remembering Phineas Four's warning - and Candace One's own request from earlier. "-and other people who invent, see, we all have to do. Every so often. Not quite every day, really, I'd say more like every thirty hours or so, but we generally do stuff everyday if we can just because."

"And what happens if you don't?" One echoed. Well, of course she would ask that. It was, apparently, entirely new to her at any rate.

"Then I - we - start going through withdrawals from it." She paused for a split second. "I won't… go into super precise detail, but your head starts hurting, and it gets hard to concentrate, and you just get, like, possessed with the urge to build something . And if, for whatever reason, you still can't - it just gets worse. Phineas rambles a lot, and I've been told I slur my words. The headaches get so bad and you shake and sweat and feel hot and cold at the same time and motor skills get compromised and then comes the nausea and the dizziness, which just worsens until you start throwing up and…" her voice trailed off, and she offered Candace One an awkward half-smile. "It's not all lollipops and rainbows."

"I… guess not."

Three glanced back and forth guiltily and scooted her chair back a bit. "I mean, I'd be lying if I tried to imply that that stuff was, like, a commonoccurrence. It's really not. But it is something you have to keep in the back of your mind."

"It… it sounds like it." Candace One shook her head. "Do - do you think that Phineas and Ferb - my brothers - have to deal with, you know, with all that?"

Three hesitated. "You know, a week ago, I'd have said 'For sure'. But now… I don't know. I mean, Four's brothers don't. And maybe I would've just thought she didn't know, but Phineas Four told me himself. So, I guess, the real answer is: there's no way for me to know."

"Oh." Candace One looked a little downcast. "I mean… I guess that makes sense. And you can't know if I could ever do anything worthwhile like this because it was the withdrawing that tipped you off to yourself?"

"I… sort of," Three replied. "What happened was - was me getting myself into a situation - right when I was your age, in fact - where Phineas and Ferb couldn't help me, even more, where they needed my help, or else they would have… well, not died, as I later found out, though at the time, that was what I thought. And the ability to build like they do had always been inside me, and that situation provided enough motivation to dig it out again." She shrugged slightly, playing idly with a pencil, twirling it between her fingers. "And, again, because without Phineas and Ferb around to help settle withdrawals by proxy, and more importantly, with them not around for me to bust, it would come out by itself soon enough. But I dug it out before that."

"Phineas and Ferb couldn't help you?" Candace One's face was clearly marked with lines of disbelief. "I mean… what could even have happened ?" She frowned slightly. "I don't think I've ever been anywhere I've been beyond their reach."

Candace Three raised her eyebrows. "You were beyond their reach in the non-dimension. While you were there, everyone and everything completely acted as if you had never existed." She paused. "In fact, that was almost what happened to me - though opposite." She could still remember the events of that day with surprising clarity, even despite the two decades between it and her now. Then again, when you considered its effect on her life as a whole, perhaps it wasn't so surprising. "I was fifteen years old - the year was 2017. It was the last day of summer of 2017, specifically. And I was so intent on busting my brothers before the summer was up that I turned on this machine that… an old childhood acquaintance's father had built. Vanessa - you remember her?"

"Yes?" One responded, her voice taking on a strangely wondering tone.

"And that was a mistake like I'd never made before," Candace Three resumed. "It got the entire space-time continuum stuck in a time loop, that kept endlessly repeating the last day of summer over and over and over again. Which was great at first, then about a month and a half deep, I started getting really bored and depressed - and lonely. But it wasn't finished there - no, spacetime was getting really stretched from all the repeated looping and these rifts started flashing in and out of existence, sucking things up, and erasing whatever was sucked up."

"Like… like tigers and spoons and capri pants," One murmured quietly.

"And then I got the idea to try and get Phineas and Ferb to help me. Which would have worked, doubtlessly, but just as I walked out to them, a rift opened behind them and they got sucked through it, leaving me all alone. I didn't know what the non-dimension was like. I thought they were going to die out there - and I couldn't deal with that. So, even though at the time I had no idea of what I was really capable of, I set out to bring them back." She was rapidly approaching the uncomfortable parts of the story that she was not about to get back into again. "And that's pretty much what happened, after… a few setbacks." She stopped short, noticing One's wide-eyed stare. "What is it?"

"That - that is like, pretty much what happened to me," the girl replied. "I mean, with, like, the loops and stuff disappearing, and rifts, and me deciding to get Phineas and Ferb's help. Only…"

"Only what?" Candace Three was growing curious despite herself now.

"I don't know," One said. "I mean, a rift opened up behind my brothers too - but I saw it coming. And I - I tackled them out of way, and it sucked up me instead. And I fell into - into that gray city. And then I ran into Two and, well, you know the rest." She stopped for a long second. So long that you might have thought she was waiting for a response, but it was easy to tell by her twisted facial features that she was still deep in thought. Candace Three wasn't generally one much inclined to patience - although she tended to think she'd improved in respect a bit over the years - but she still waited for the teenager to speak up again. She had trampled over One a lot in the past two days, hadn't she? It was only right, then.

At last, Candace One appeared to reach an internal conclusion. She sighed and looked up. "I - I was kinda hoping that you'd be able to tell me some really obvious way that I could be as smart as my brothers, too. But - but it took you being all alone and having to deal with that all by yourself? And I… am not alone. Because there's Two and you and Four and Five and Six and Seven and Four's brothers and I'm not having to do anything except be bored… it's kind of… disappointing, really. Kind of."

Candace Three frowned, a bit unsure of how to reply to that . It… well… if she had had everyone and everything One had now so long ago, would she have rediscovered the gift inside her? She - she really couldn't quite say.

"I don't know." One sighed. "Maybe it's stupid. But… back in the non-dimension, when you were talking about us being able to do the things Phineas and Ferb can do, I thought, you know, maybe you were right? Maybe I could stop being ignored by everyone. I mean… if I could do what they do, I could actually be noticed , be taken seriously for once. Be - be something other the crazy older sister who is as noisy as she is useless. Actually measure up to my brothers for once in my life."

Three snorted. "You think that all happened to me after I figured this thing out?" When One nodded, she shook her head emphatically. "Not hardly. Oh, sure, I wasn't shunned nearly as much, which was nice enough, but for the longest time afterwards - years, even - people still ignored me in favor of my brothers. I mean, and why shouldn't they? Phineas and Ferb were the originals, the tried and true. I was just some tacked-on addition to the group. Most people couldn't really care less about who built whatever anyway, so long as they get to use it." She paused. "As to the other thing… well, I'm not going to lie, it was - is - nice. Great - awesome, even. I'm not going to try and downplay it or anything. But the things you're looking for… can't be solved with any amount of high technology." She chuckled half-heartedly. "If anything, it kinda just kept pushing me away from anything normal. I wasn't normal before , and definitely not after . And really, thanks to withdrawals, it's literally physically not possible for me to ever be. Which is… fine, I guess, I don't know. " Throwing her hands in the air listlessly, she rolled her eyes. "I mean, I'm the designated crazy one anyway - what was I supposed to do about it?"

"Oh, come on," One said. "You can't seriously be trying to tell me that suddenly being able to have nature bend over backwards to accommodate you didn't make you feel better about yourself. I mean, what more could you want? You can literally do anything ."

"Not quite anything ," Three replied. Then she shrugged. "But I know what you mean. And yeah, I'd never try to claim that it didn't - that it doesn'tfeel good. And even back then, yeah, you're completely right. It was a boost in that way. I wasn't stupid anymore! I was actually capable of doing something. No more would I trapped in the background, unable to make people notice me. Of course, then I realized that, like I said before, a good ninety-percent of people using our inventions were there for that reason alone - they didn't care about Phineas or Ferb, really, and by extension, about me. And having nature bend over for you is great . Redefining physics as I see fit? Love it. But… it's not all it's cracked up to be when your two little brothers have been doing it for years. So you're not really anything great or new or exceptional. You're on a different scale, for sure, but on that scale you're still nothing special. Your brothers were there first, so they still get most of the attention anyway." She gave a small smile. "And then when you grow up and realize that being on that different scale is not all that great either, considering that it means you get to relate to exactly your family and no one else, that the rest of the world as a whole is on the far side of an uncrossable chasm."

"Still." Candace One crossed her arms. "You can't convince me that it's not better to be able to do that."

Three opened her mouth to reply, but stopped before any words came out. Well, part of what One was saying was true. She wasn't exactly sure whether 'better' was the right word, but… well, she was the weird one. That was her title, her spot in the universe - in the multiverse, even. So, if she was going to be that way forever, she might as well make the most of it, right? And she did love her brother, and she did love their children, and she did love what they all did together.

It wasn't like she had much of a choice in the matter, really. And even despite - even if she did have a choice, she wasn't sure if she would take it. All her life she'd desired the normalcy forever beyond her reach, and yet… would it be worth it, considering everything she would have to give up?

She'd literally just had this exact same conversation with Candace Four. And Four had been right, in the same way that One was right now - in the way that Three felt was right, but… she could think it all she wanted. It was actually trying to believe in it that was so hard. And it embarrassed her, too, because she knew she was being dumb for no reason about it.

Under no circumstances would she dream of leaving her brother - not now. The time for that had come and gone seventeen years ago. And any last shadow of a doubt had been rooted out for good four years after that , in the February of 2025. The time for backing out was long gone, really. More importantly, she didn't want to back out.

She ought to take Four's advice and just accept that.

"For me," she said at last.

"Huh?"

"For me," she repeated. "It's better for me. Perhaps the best, I don't know. And I don't know if you have it or not, I guess. That'd probably be up to you to dig inside yourself and find out. But… I'm the weird Candace, and so I'm gonna have a weird life. And of all the weird lives I could've had, well, I do think mine's the best." It wasn't exactly a stunning conclusion, really. Anyone with half a brain could have seen it coming. She herself knew it was inevitable, because she really wouldn't leave it. Because she'd had chances, and had turned them all down. And although the inventing thing was a 'must', the incest was not, and yet… she had no intention of stopping either. Again, fairly obvious.

Of course, even saying all that did nothing to reduce the attractiveness of the 'other side' - the normalcy that she kind of longed for. Who knows how Candace Four managed to summarily dismiss these things as easily as she did.

Four had her own issues, Three knew, but they were at least understandable . Four hadn't wanted Three's life (and no one in their right mind would) - all she saw was that Three could herself had been jealous of her own brothers' gift for long time, so she could definitely understand that, especially when you considered that Four had been more concerned with Phineas Four's thoughts of her than anything. Which was perhaps not something she needed to have worried about… but again. Understandable. What logical reason Three had for pining after something that she could have had, but had freely turned down, and would basically instantly turn down again if the opportunity presented itself, no one knew.

Three knew those wishes were stupid, and she knew she would never act on them, but they still obstinately stuck around nonetheless.

She'd had this same discussion with Phineas many times, before Candace Four had even entered the picture at all. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. You don't know what you have until it's gone. You can't miss something that you've never had, no, and the flip of that was that you couldn't very well miss something that was never gone to be missed at all. What would Phineas say to her right now if he was here?

In all honesty, he probably wouldn't have to say anything, beyond one of those corny jokes and warm smiles of his. Because for all her craziness, Candace loved her brother, and she belonged together with him. It wasn't hard to feel that way when he was right next to her, holding her, or even just in the same house.

Right now, she'd have settled for 'same dimension' honestly… the point still stood. It was in his absence that these things always became an issue - because, in a way, their relationship was the most unusual thing about her life. There was no way around that one, for sure, and if she intended to remain within it, her title of 'weird' would always remained firmly affixed to her forehead.

And that was that, really, although these things were much easier when Phineas was here. Heck, it was easier with Candace Four. Perhaps the better way to phrase it would be 'It was harder by yourself'.

"I guess that's fair," Candace One replied slowly. "Even if it is kind of a cop-out answer."

"I know it is," Three apologized. "But it's the best I can do - I mean, we're from different dimensions. I don't know whether yours works in a way fundamentally different from mine - but it well might, considering that Four's does." And also considering the slightly uncomfortable reveal that Candace Four had had much the same teenage 'busting' phase that she'd had… which was definitely implication that her busting had been more conscious choice and less stifled withdrawals than she had liked to think. It was...well, it was a long time ago now, and probably not worth stressing out over. "After all," she resumed. "The first hint Phineas ever saw of me being able to do this was when everyone went into my mind one day… he saw something suspicious and proceeded to do nothing the next day. Which, of course, gave me nothing to satisfy my own urges on. Which resulted in me being driven batty and constructing an entire project on my own to ease the issue. At the time, I had no idea what was going on inside my own head." She shook her head. "Point being, as far as I know… you could be able to do this, like I can. Or, like Four, I suppose, you could not. It's… well, I don't want to say 'up to you' because it's not, exactly, but at the same time, I suppose it kinda is."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, look at Four. She can't do this. At least, so she says, and at this point, I'm not very inclined to doubt her word. And yet, even despite that, she's not incapable . Not by a long shot, even. Remember earlier this morning when I told you that inventing is in the Flynn blood?" She paused and waited for One to nod. "I think I was right, still - it is , all of us, just… to different extremes. Apparently I got the extreme-est version, which I would , of course. But even if you never do get to the level of your brothers, that's not to say that you couldn't try. And be honest now: you knowyour brothers would love it if you did."

Candace One squirmed for a second. "I - I guess they would," she said. "I mean… you know."

"But I guess the other thing to keep in mind is this," Three added. "Whether or not you do achieve Phineas and Ferb's level of skill: it's not going to change who you are as a person . It's not going to alter your personality . If you're anything like me, you'll still get afraid, still get nervous and freak out over things, still get lonely and still be worried over things…" her voice trailed off, but she mentally added ' things you shouldn't worry about '. "And, of course, too - there'll be the added bonus of constantly being frustrated with yourself when that does happen because you could've done something about it, and why didn't you? Which is definitely annoying. So… no matter what happens, just… don't be expecting this to magically solve your problems, your worries, your fears… if you do, you'll be sorely disappointed in the end."

"I - I guess so," One agreed. "I mean… it makes sense when you say it like that."

"Yeah, it makes sense." Three nodded. "But that doesn't mean it helped me any, at least." She shrugged slightly. "But I guess that's just life for you."

"And you - there's really no way to tell if I ever could actually do this, then?"

Candace Three sighed slightly. "I mean… in theory I could make some sort of brain-boosting helmet and have you put it on - if you were able to handle it, then we could say for almost sure that you did, somewhere. And if it drove you to insanity and and compulsively required you to do whatever necessary to construct something enormous, then we could probably bet you don't. But… it would probably hurt." And of course, by 'hurt', she meant 'instantly induce withdrawals', which was… not something Candace Three would have wished upon her worst enemy, much less Candace One. There was a time and a place for being petty and holding grudges, but withdrawals were not the thing to mess with in that regard.

"Oh." Candace One looked disappointed. "I guess."

"Trust me on that one," Three replied. "I've seen it with my own eyes - it's not pretty."

"So I guess the only thing that I really know now that I didn't before is… that I have a chance of being like them one day? That's… nice, I guess, I don't know. It's not very concrete, though."

"It's all I really can tell you," Candace Three apologized. "I mean, the fact that we're from alternate dimensions just brings in too many variables for anybody to be sure. Heck, I've not even seen your dimension yet, and you haven't seen mine. For all we know, there could be some glaring huge difference in them that neither of us has thought to bring up because we've both assumed it to be normal. That's the way this thing works, really."

"Yeah, and that if I want to find out for sure, I have to be in a life-or-death situation with no other recourse. That sounds fun." Candace One rolled her eyes.

"Well, not entirely." Three smiled slightly. "That might be the quickest way, but if it is present inside you to a greater degree than you already have - as I already proved to you," she held up her hand to stop any protests from the girl. "- then you're just as likely to be able to wake it up naturally too. But… that would require, well, it'd require swallowing your objections and busting urges and working with your brothers, trying to encourage it to wake back up gently over time."

"But I don't want to quit busting," One said. "I mean… I guess it's kinda… counterintuitive, but - but everyone thinks I'm crazy and I've got to at least prove to Mom that I'm not insane! And Phineas and Ferb, they - they get away with all this stuff that I could never get away with, I mean, I got grounded for a week for having a party - that wasn't even a party, really, it was just an intimate get-together that got, you know, a bit out of hand, with the goat and all. And yet, they build massive mega-contraptions of doom and no one ever finds out. Ever!"

"I know." Three sighed. "And I'm… not going to tell you how to live your life anymore, because I really shouldn't have been doing that in the first place, but, well, that stuff is harsh to deal with. And how you do deal with it is… up to you."

"It's always up to me," One grumbled. "Well, thanks… I guess? I don't know."

"Mmm hmm." Candace Three shrugged slightly and pulled her chair closer to the desk. She was about ready to begin working again when One suddenly spoke up from behind her.

"You - you don't happen to know of anything I could do around here?" The girl sighed. "It's just so… boring ."

Raising her eyebrows a little, Three turned back to face her companion again. "I have no idea on that front. I'm not from here, you know? You'd have to ask Four, I guess."

"I was going to," One admitted. "But before I came in here I checked upstairs and couldn't find her and I don't know where she could've gone. And I finished all the books on the shelf - all the interesting ones, at least - and now there's nothing really to do except eat and sit around and I can't even play on my phone because the battery's going to die without being charged."

"I'm sorry," Three said. "It sounds like a pain."

"Yeah."

Candace Three frowned. "Why do I get the feeling you're wanting me to do something about this?"

One smiled sheepishly. "I mean… you could , right? You - you're like Phineas and Ferb. You can do anything, right? Surely you could do something."

Three exhaled loudly, trying to think of something that she could do - something interesting enough to keep One entertained, but also not, you know, like a rollercoaster through the downtown area. She wasn't sure if Phineas Four would appreciate that, to be fair, or where she would get the materials for something like that regardless. She glanced around the laboratory area, hunting for inspiration of some sort. It wasn't her strong suit, exactly - mostly Phineas', who seemed to have passed it down to their daughter, but she could certainly make an effort.

Besides, it was probably only fair… Candace One had been right about how often she'd gotten ignored and talked over. It was, well, it was a bit of a complex situation there, because Candace Three was quite sure that One's brother would be the best for her in the long run. She felt that from her own experience, after all. But Phineas Four had asked them not to bring it up again, which was… the right thing to do, she knew.

As she was sitting there, however, an idea struck at last. She reached down into her pocket and slid out her phone. It couldn't actually connect with any of the networks here in Dimension Four - the special private geostationary satellite she and Phineas had launched above their house for conducting their family's cell phone traffic was capable of a lot of things, but not interdimensional contact.

All that aside, though, it was still a nifty device capable of lots of cool things. She'd repaired it the other night after having torn out its insides in the non-dimension, and if anything could be interesting to Candace One, this would probably be it. Plus, it ran on a battery of Mudanium Finite, which was four times less powerful than Pizzazium, but also not nearly as dangerous to interact with. And it was also enough for like, what, three or four weeks of constant use per charge?

"Here." She handed it to the teenager. "You can, I don't know… do something with it. I think there's some movies or games or books or something on it. There's also lots of pictures from last time we went to planet Meap, but… well, you've been warned about those. I don't know - you'll figure out something, right?"

"Oh," One exclaimed. "I'm a teenage girl. Nobody has to teach me how to use a cell phone. I-" she hesitated. "Unless, of course, this one also likes to teleport you around randomly? It doesn't does it?"

"Well, there is a teleporter," Three replied. "But it's not gonna work anyway without being able to talk to our satellite in my dimension. So for now, 'no', I guess?" She paused. "I was going to say let me open it for you, but I suppose our DNA is pretty much the same anyway. So yeah, have fun, I guess."

"Thank you!" One exclaimed. "I - I'm just going to go sit down in that other room again. Is that alright?"

Candace Three nodded, and the girl darted off.

Well, there was one problem solved, at least. You know, it might have been easier if she had just thought to do that earlier… if Candace One'd had something to do to kill time, she might not have been so inclined to explode on everything like she had done instead. But it was done now - and it was also time for Three herself to get back to work.

Candace One wasn't so bad or terribly frightening as Three had really thought. She was just a fifteen year old girl, but more so, just Candace Flynn - another Candace Flynn. (Candace Three wasn't sure if she was going to be able to get used to being the 'only' Candace Flynn again when she did get home. It would be pain, probably.) She reminded Three of herself when she was that age, which, of course, was obviously going to be so since One more or less was Three when she was that age.

Was all of them really - Three, Four, Five, heck, even Seven, technically. (Seven hadn't been born an anomaly, of course.) They all shared a common past, more or less, a past that One represented strongly. And at the same time, One was none of them. Because Three and Four and Five and Seven had chosen their ways in life, and had come out vastly different because of it. One was… still at the crossroads. Her dimension had reached the point of shearing off of the others - from this point forwards, she'd be blazing her own trail in life.

And although Three had her own strong opinions on which options would be best for the girl, in the end the One would return to her own home and would be the one making those decisions. So it wasn't really up to Three, was it?

It was all very curious, if you thought about it.

When Candace One turned twenty-three eight years from now, Three would be forty-four years old herself. (And Four would be fifty-one, but that was rather beside the point.) The point was, at twenty-three Candace Three had become a mother, which had been a huge shift in her and her brother's life. Would it be the same way for One?

Would Candace One grow up to fulfil the nitty gritty details of whatever future she had planned out - and from what Candace Three had heard last night, it had sounded awfully familiar - or would her life, too, be turned upside down to the point where she was carrying her brother's child before he had turned twenty?

In the end, really, only time would tell. And perhaps Candace Three should take heart in that fact - after all, no matter what her subconscious or her sneaking worries told her about it, the fact alone that she had tried to convince One to follow in her footsteps should be proof that she was happy where she was.

And she was. She had no regrets. Well, a few… it would have been nice to have had Amanda at least a little bit later, but… there were no complaints here. And that, too, was why Three was working so diligently on getting herself home. Because she was crazy (and there was no doubt about that), but she had a place where that crazy belonged. And that was where she was going to get to.

And that was where she was going to stay .


	29. Trouble Magnets, Two

Many hours of steady work had slipped by into the past.

Other Phineas had long since returned from wherever he'd gone after his and Four's children had left for home. And, slowly but surely, progress was being made. Despite what it had seemed like at first, there was a pattern to the gashes and weak points scattered throughout the spacetime continuum. The method to the madness emerged slowly, but it did emerge.

A new chart matching the new pattern of the flux movement patterns had been drawn up, and the new wavelength charted and tracked to an accuracy of less than a single graviton's width in error bars.

The weakened continuum structure was making the whole process extremely fiddly. No one seemed to know exactly what had happened to weaken the continuum to such an unprecedented degree… but they were getting it done regardless of that fact.

It was rather tedious, no lie, but it was also rather important that they take their time to baby the injured continuum - getting back home wouldn't be very useful if they accidentally tore the fabric of reality to such a great degree that the entire multiverse began collapsing on itself, permanently tearing the entire thing to shreds. Well… perhaps not the entire thing - the spacetime continuum really was unfathomably enormous. But definitely their local dimensional subcluster. Which… wasn't much better, since dimensions outside the subcluster were likely to be vastly different from the ones on the inside.

And given how different those ones on the inside could still be, Candace Three was fairly sure she didn't want to risk having to flee to a dimension beyond the subcluster because they'd accidentally annihilated their homes in a disaster the likes of the which the multiverse had never seen before.

It'd be akin to having to go live in the apartment block across the street because you'd set off a box full of dynamite inside your own block. People tended to have this idea of the spacetime continuum as this grand construct so mighty and powerful that it could never be affected, when the truth was… it was much more fragile than all that. If you had the right materials and know-how, there wasn't much stopping you.

All that aside however, progress was nonetheless being made. And speaking of progress…

"I found a way around the vaporization point when the wavelength peaks on the y-spectrum," Candace Three spoke aloud. "We can harness the accelerated subspace harmonic to reinforce the console against graviton resistance - which should let us bypass even that extreme with relative safety."

There was a moment of silence as Other Phineas peeked over her shoulder. "And how much fabric will it tear?"

"Still can't get it under twelve," she replied. "But it's at 14.226 now, which is the best option by far right now."

"Well…"

"I know, I know, it needs to be under twelve." She shook her head and half-smiled. "I'm working on it."

"In any case," he returned. "I've been checking various materials against the sort of conditions they'll need to withstand for extended periods in the flux space between dimensions. I've settled on these graphene sheets - they've pulled consistently good results in my testing and according to calculations, should be stable enough for at least three hundred dimensional jumps before needing maintenance."

"Sounds perfect," she replied, standing up and stretching.

"Pretty much," he noted. "The one thing I've got here is that buckypaper actually can outperform the graphene - but only under conditions of low graviton resistance. The graphene can handle it, though, but they tear a lot more of the fabric while doing so."

Candace Three raised an eyebrow. "How much more?"

"Not, like, an absolute ton," he replied. "Just around 1.7253-ish but… every fractional point counts when it's gonna be adding up over multiple trips."

"True." She shrugged. "Maybe we ought to trade jobs for a bit. You know, fresh eyes and all that."

"Perhaps." He nodded slightly. "Actually, though, I had something else I wanted to talk to you about." Then silence - so long and awkward that Candace Three turned to look at him questioningly. Other Phineas may not have been her own brother, but he was rather similar enough that it was kind of off-putting to hear him being - and thus feeling - awkward.

"What is it?"

He hesitated. "You know how a few hours ago I went to go grab the capacitor from that side office?" She nodded slightly, a bit confused, and he continued. "Yeah. Well, I, uh, I ran into Candace Seven when I went in there too."

Candace rolled her eyes, but couldn't quite stifle the feeling of nervousness that crept up inside the pit of her stomach. It really was annoying - before she'd known about where exactly Seven had come from, she'd been annoyed by her, aggravated by her constant complaining, and puzzled by her insistence on everything being Phineas' and Ferb's fault.

And all of that had also worked to make Candace Three wonder if, for the first time in her life, she'd actually found someone who was crazier than her… not in just one or two facets either, but actually overall just more… insane than she was. Which hope, of course, had been promptly dashed to pieces by the revelation that Candace Seven actually was her… a quantum duplicate, an anomalous fragment from a timeline that had apparently been averted some time ago.

That had… not been fun to find out. Candace Three knew - and had known for some time - of what she technically had the ability to do inside her. She had seen with her own eyes exactly to what lengths it was possible for her to go if she let herself. And seeing yet another of version of herself for whom the elevator didn't go all the way to the top… well, it hadn't been very reassuring.

And even now, she couldn't help but feel like she had to assure Other Phineas that whatever Seven had said wasn't true - as if he might somehow hold Seven's insults and general sour demeanor against Three herself, as if he might hold her responsible. It was a stupid worry… she knew that Seven was no more her than was Four. They were the same person by technicality only, like identical twins might be - but that technicality was nonetheless a very important one.

"What'd she do?" Three asked nervously, hoping it wasn't it anything too bad. Somehow the whole issue with Seven just felt… different now. Three was really hoping she could get over this soon, because unlike a lot of her worries, she really hated this one and wanted it gone .

"Well…" Other Phineas hesitated. "She said some… unpleasant stuff." He reached up to scratch behind his ear. "Said that, you know, she didn't like me very much."

Candace frowned. She was about ninety-five percent sure that she was being lied to by now… if there was one thing her brother could not do, it was lie. At least not effectively - his nervous tics were simply too obvious (and apparently ingrained in subconscious habit) to allow that. But she also wasn't sure that she wanted to know the truth, either - ignorance was bliss, right? It was probably better that she not know, anyway. She'd already heard Seven let some nasty things out of her mouth, and if Other Phineas didn't want to tell her, then it was probably for the best.

"Anyway," he continued, clearing his throat. "I was just, you know, wondering… if you might know anything about why she… doesn't like me?"

"No!" Candace Three exclaimed, probably a bit too hastily. "I mean… how would I know? We're - we're completely different. Surely - surely you can see that."

"Three…" he shook his head. "I know that . I'm not blaming you for it. I know how alternate timelines and such work."

Candace kicked her feet idly against the baseboard of the desk. "I know. I know, I just… it's kinda freaky all the same. I mean… she is me. Before our timelines diverged, there was no 'me'... just her. I mean, I know that's not really how it works, but that's how it feels, kinda."

Other Phineas smiled. "She's an anomaly, Three. She was never 'you' at all - just what you could have turned into. You never had to turn into her, and knowing what I do of you, I don't think you ever would have, either. Even so, she didn't even give you that choice - and made sure of that by doing… something that would anomalize her. Time travel - something to do with her own past, I guess, since that's where anomalies come from."

"I know that," Three protested, feeling sheepish. Hearing it confirmed from an outside source had helped somewhat, she supposed. Maybe this was just one of those things that took time, or something. "It just feels weird anyway." She shook her head. "But I was being honest before, too… I don'tknow why she's so against you and Ferb."

"I suppose you wouldn't." Other Phineas looked thoughtful for a second. "She would have had to have changed her own past to such a degree that her time-traveling trip to change whatever would not have happened in the first place." He frowned. "I don't really know what Candace might travel back in time to change. And given the, uh, the difference between your and her mindsets, I rather doubt you would either."

Candace Three shrugged. "I have no idea." She hadn't really done much time-traveling in her day, really, aside from one panic-trip long ago when she'd been freaking out over Jeremy Johnson breaking up with her. No, come to think of it, there had been that time with the T-Rex, too. And… and that one other time, too - the time she'd met her… met her future self?

Wait a second… when had that been again? She couldn't remember it that clearly (it had been over two decades ago now), but she was pretty sure that they hadn't gone too far into the future. She scrunched her face and tried to recall as many details of the faraway time as she could manage. She'd seen… Phineas and Ferb messing with the museum time machine again. And had hopped on board and taken a ride in the future - twenty years into the future, right? But, wait… twenty years into the future from then was…

... was last year .

And Candace Three could remember the last year much more clearly. Clearly enough to know to for sure that she had not seen a time machine, nor interacted with a version of herself from the distant past. And yet, her memory of the trip did in fact indicate that she'd met her own future self. And if she was now that future self, and hadn't interacted with her past self in that way… well, there was only one explanation.

"You know what?" She suddenly spoke up again. "I… still don't know why she doesn't like you. But I think I may remember where she came from. Because now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I may have seen more than one alternate future as a kid."

Other Phineas raised one eyebrow expectantly. "What do you mean?"

"It was a long time ago," she started. "So I don't remember a massive amount of it, but, well - a long time ago, I got into a time machine and visited the future and ran into my future self. It was in the summer of 2017. Which I remember because that was the last year I really… 'busted', so to speak. Anyway, from that day in 2017, we traveled twenty years into the future - to last year. And I met with and talked to my future self. And also my future daughter, now that I think about it, though I can't remember very much of her ." Not much at all, although the more she tried, the more she got the impression that her daughter was much different from the Amanda Flynn that she'd seen in what she was now pretty much sure was an alternate future.

Of course, if she was right, then, based on what Seven had said… that hadn't been Amanda Flynn at all, but Amanda Johnson , which was… an interesting thought. A future version of herself had actually managed to marry Jeremy Johnson? Honestly, it somewhat helped to explain why she was so moody and grouchy all the time - she hadn't always had Phineas around to help her through rough patches in his own way like Three had always had. It didn't explain why exactly she was so against him, though… that was something that Candace Three couldn't really think of a way to explain.

"Oh," Other Phineas replied. "And even though that twenty years came and went last year - you didn't interact with a version of yourself from the past last year. Which means you were visiting an alternate future."

"Exactly." She nodded. "From what I understand, at least." She paused for a moment. "So, I guess… I guess Seven would be - would be that me from that alternate future that I saw? Strange… I remember the future me as being way taller and, you know, just more in a 'loom over me' sort of way. But I guess I was a kid then, so that's probably why." She stopped to think for a moment. "And when she traveled back through time and met me, it ended up providing me with a scenario that was never in her own past… therefore, I couldn't have made the exact choices that were necessary to become her - to lead up to her future - because I wasn't faced with the same choices that she was - I had entirely different ones presented to me."

"Well, yes," Other Phineas said, nodding. "That would be how temporal anomalies are created. Or at least one of the ways."

"I know," Candace Three said. "But it's weird to think about - you know, that I may have met her before. As a kid… and now we're the same age. And obviously that's because she time traveled back to meet me - well, probably not to meet me - but the point still stands."

"Fair enough," he conceded. "I can see how that would be off-putting, yeah."

"Mmm hmm." She nodded, drumming her fingers idly on the edge. "That… still doesn't explain why she doesn't like you, though… I mean, she's always talking about you're to fault for everything? I don't really know if that extends to the whole 'temporal anomaly' aspect of things, though." That was odd thought… but she supposed it would be decent reason to not like someone?

Of course, it didn't exactly fit, either, given what it would imply about Candace Seven's brothers. Even though they were from a different timeline, and could be completely different from even Candace Three's brothers… she still found it hard to picture any version of Phineas and Ferb in the light that Seven had constantly been painting them. It wasn't technically impossible , she supposed. With a large enough sample size, any outrageous thing is apt to happen - and this would be outrageous indeed. Especially considering Phineas and Ferb were… well, so far they'd seemed to be the closest thing to an interdimensional constant that Three had seen.

And not even necessarily about inventing , since apparently that was also something that could vary from dimension to dimension. But just their… personalities in general. It seemed to be a rather hard-and-fast rule, at least based on the Candaces she'd talked very much too, that no matter where you went, Phineas and Ferb were just… themselves. Perhaps with variances based on their surroundings, but they were still always generally the same happy-go-lucky, carefree, creative sort of people who would never hurt a fly.

(Incidentally, their lack of inclination to hurt flies in particular was something had once come into play in Candace Three's own life as well.)

That Seven's brothers were not … well, that was something that Candace Three found rather difficult to believe, even if she supposed that there was nothing explicitly preventing it from being true.

"How strange," Other Phineas mused. "I suppose that might be true? I hadn't really thought of it before, but I do suppose that anomalization, by its very definition, must be a terrible thing to experience."

"I… guess so?" Candace lowered her eyebrows in thought. Yeah, that was probably true. When something became an anomaly, it was flat-out erased from existence. Completely and entirely, except minus the actual erasal. All memory of the object, all effects the object might have once had would be gone.

…yikes. That would be pretty bad, yeah. This sort of thing was why you didn't mess with your own past, really - it was just asking for disaster. And turning into a leftover timeline fragment because the spacetime continuum needed to avert a paradox was definitely a disaster of sorts.

It would comparable to faking your own death, Candace Three supposed. Only with becoming an anomaly, it was a one-time choice… and if you chose to act in such a way that would turn you into a temporal anomaly, then there was pretty much no going back. Sometimes issues with anomalies could be resolved - but those times were few and very far between, and were all related to non-sentient anomalies - non living objects anomalized in one way or another. When dealing with living creatures, trying to get your past self to exactly redo what you had done… was basically impossible, not just because people were stubborn, but because when you originally did those things, you hadn't had someone telling you what to do.

And it was little details that made all the difference, really, especially when allowed to accumulate over ten or twenty years. And those long stretches of time you had to wait to see the difference could easily be jumped past in an instant with a time machine, making the difference seem very different indeed.

"It's certainly possible," Other Phineas agreed. "I actually wish I'd thought of it before, I… I'm pretty sure it was my fault for making her mad by poking so close to a… sensitive subject."

"I highly doubt that." Three rolled her eyes. "For Seven, sometimes I think 'mad' is like her default mood. I don't think I've ever seen her in even a halfway-decent mood."

"Still," he replied firmly. "Someone's got to be there for her. She's an anomaly, Three… she has no one . At least, she had no one. Before now."

"That is… admirable." It was also something she could totally see Phineas thinking, no matter what the odds of success were. This wasn't science… this was dealing with a woman who'd declared in no uncertain terms that she wanted nothing to do with Phineas and Ferb, who was depending on them solely for their help getting back home and nothing more. She was worse than Five in some ways, and Candace Three had already lost her temper on Five just minutes after they'd met for the first time. "Good luck, I guess. She still in that room?"

"I don't know." He frowned. "And I probably ought to wait until tomorrow anyway… it's getting late and I promised Candace I would go home tonight. I mean, I hate to leave things… hanging in the air, but that can't really be helped. Don't want to start something I wouldn't be able to finish."

"Fair enough." Candace Three wasn't quite so sure why he seemed so concerned over Seven all of the sudden - Seven'd clearly informed everyone that she wasn't fond of him many times over. "Wait, you're going home?"

He nodded emphatically. "Yes, indeed. I'm sorry if you-"

"No, no, no," she hastily clarified. "That's fine with me - great even. We'll finally get some peace and quiet from Two." Of all the Candaces, Two was not one that Candace Three found herself missing very often.

"Oh, yeah, that…" Other Phineas grimaced. "...will not be fun. But I have a feeling that she won't take 'no' for an answer anyway." He sighed slightly. "It's fine. If she wants to come and sleep on the couch or whatever, more power to her, I guess. I wish I could get her to… wind down, somehow, but I don't know if that's even possible anymore."

"Tell me about it," Candace Three muttered by way of reply. Candace Two had been under her skin ever since that one accident in the non-dimension. It was like the woman couldn't forgive just one minor thing. Well, perhaps 'minor' wasn't the right word… but come on! It was ridiculous now. 'Can't afford mistakes', her rear. Mistakes were a part of life. They'd lived, hadn't they? And it wasn't like Three was even wanting Two to forget about it (although that would have been nice), but at least to quit holding it against her.

She tried to exhale in an at least somewhat longsuffering manner, but failed and the breath came out as an exasperated huff instead. Whatever - she needed to find something to get her mind off Two, off Seven, off her other selves, really.

They weren't all bad (Six, for example, was quite pleasant, if strange herself) but most of them were from such different worlds that it was tiring to talk to them. And in the case of, say, Candace Five, probably not worth the effort. It was a shame to think about it, really - interacting with spatio-temporal duplicates of yourself was cool . But although the concept was cool, it neglected to include the fact that those duplicates were all different people. Occasionally very different, with very different views on very different things.

She turned back and collected up the papers on the desk, packing them into a neat little stack, then looked at Other Phineas again. "I'm going to get ahold of that capacitor pack of yours and start charging it up, if you don't mind. I think I should step away from the logistics until I can clear my head a bit with some of this hands-on stuff you've got going on over here."

"Alright." He gestured over another desk pushed into the far corner of laboratory area. "It's over there in that box. Gonna help with structural design or what?"

She shrugged. "Whatever." He nodded, and she paced across the length of the floor to the box he'd indicated.

It was rather awkwardly shaped, so instead of trying to move the whole thing, she decided to to cut it open and carry over only the capacitor. That would probably be easier, if not by much. Of course, it depended on how much of the box was machine and how much was space stuffed with packing peanuts.

There was a closet next to the desk, and as she was poking around, looking for a knife or pair of scissors or blowtorch or some sort of implement for cutting through and into the box, she pulled the door open. Her eyebrows rose slightly when she what was inside. Well, here was a blast from the past that she hadn't quite expected to get here, of all places.

She turned to call to Other Phineas over her shoulder. "You guys have a Neural Information Transfer headset piece in here?" She raised one eyebrow, eyeing the thick black cable sprouting from the top part of the headset's dome, snaking off to end in an oddly-shaped cable jack that was most likely designed to be plugged into the other headset - the receiving end. Or possibly sending end, if this was the receiving end, she supposed.

"What?" Other Phineas paused in the middle of doing… whatever it was that he was doing over there. She couldn't quite see him behind the skeleton of the dimension-hopping vehicle that was coming together in the middle of the lab's floor. He poked his head around one side of the prototype machine. "NIT helmets? We do? Where?"

"What on earth do you use them for?" Three continued, a bit confused. Neural Information Transfer was a nifty little technology, and rather fun to play with, but you couldn't really transfer enough information to be really useful … if you were expecting to transfer an entire book's worth of information or something into your head so you didn't have to read it, well, all you'd really get was an electric shock and a bad hair day for a good while after. The neuron structures inside your brain were not made to receive information by having it beamed directly into your skull, and trying to do it anyway would rapidly devolve into 'not fun' mode. She knew that all too well.

Other Phineas walked across the room and looked inside the closet. For a second, he seemed puzzled, but then a look of comprehension spread across his face.

"That's not an information transfer headset." He paused. "Well, I mean, it kinda is? But not in the way you're thinking of, I'm sure. It transfers information, sure, but it doesn't actually try to write it into your brain - it interfaces with your sensory lobes when brain activity is at its lowest to induce a dreamlike state, and uses a special data array to project the conscious mind into, well, basically into someone else's dreams - though it wouldn't be an actual dream so much as a dream like state of… partial lucidity."

"That's… pretty nifty."

He nodded. "Yeah, it is. Plus, that's not even the coolest part."

"Oh?"

"The best part of the thing is that it's connected to - well, it's not connected to it right now , but that's beside the point - it can be connected to a spatio-temporal projection manifold capable of transmitting the signals interdimensionally. With next to no spacetime tearing either - I found a neat way of harnessing natural flux wave instability to basically 'pull' the signal with it, which is actually really great."

"That is… really cool," Candace Three replied wonderingly. "It's like an interdimensional mind swapping device - except you restricted the power level to that of a lucid trance, so nothing is actually swapped … you just get to talk to someone. Like telepathy, or something." She was reminded of that mind swapping device her brothers had built once, a long time ago, when those hostile aliens had taken over their bodies. (And also the time her mind had gotten swapped with Perry's, but that was more of a side-effect that resulted from using beta-particle based teleportation on more than one living creature simultaneously. Not really an intention of design.) That mind swapping device had been nifty, but it had also been far larger and bulkier than this one looked. And probably vastly less efficient, too, if she had to guess without asking Other Phineas about energy expenditure.

"Ahh… yes," Other Phineas said. "That is exactly what I did. You know, eventually."

"How do you find a target in another dimension, though?" she replied. "I mean, if you're not actually ripping spacetime, then you can't see if you're going to contact someone? I guess you could just keep firing it randomly until you hit someone, but that seems like a waste of power." She furrowed her brow in thought. "Hang on, I can figure this one out. A… miniature spacetime rift? No, that would defeat the whole purpose of doing this without ripping spacetime anyway."

"No, it's much simpler than all that, actually," Other Phineas replied. "It takes a snapshot of your quantum-ion trace and genetic makeup and uses that as template when being pulled through spacetime by the flow of the flux. Obviously it won't find you specifically, but I figured out a way to get it to do a 'fuzzy match', more or less, where it just looks for something close - specifically, your counterpart in another dimension, who, although different, would still be the only trace and makeup close enough to lock the device and open a channel for your minds to establish connection."

Candace Three facepalmed. "That's … that's genius. I wish I'd thought of that. Now I feel silly."

"Of course, it does require that the person on the receiving end be sleeping - because it uses their mind as the 'docking station', so to speak… and neural activity has to be at a minimum or else it'll block the signal."

She nodded. "Makes sense." Just then, an idea popped into her head that made her eyes grow wide. Wait, no, she probably shouldn't get too excited about this. She had just heard him explain its method of targeting, and it sounded strongly as if it would only really be able to find spatio-temporal duplicates, which wouldn't help at all, because Candace Four was already here. Well, somewhere around here. Either way… stay pessimistic and you'll always either be proven right or pleasantly surprised? That wasn't a good way to live either, Candace knew, but she really didn't want to get her hopes up too high for no reason. "Say… you don't think you could fire this thing up and use it to, you know, find somebody in my dimension? You know, for me to talk to? Like, you know, Phineas - my brother, I mean?"

Other Phineas paused mid-stride as he was walking away. "I… don't think so? Your brother is, well, your brother, not you. We can definitely try, but I'm pretty sure your and his genetic makeup will be too different for the machine to be able to find him." He paused, eyeing her face. "But we can try if you want. It - it might be good to take a short break anyway."

"No, no," she protested. "I mean, it would just be a waste of time if it's not going to work. I… can wait."

"Well, you never know." He grinned. "I've never actually tried using it make contact with a person with a completely different genetic makeup before. It'll be neat… running off just your quantum-ion trace, I guess? We'll have to try to find out."

Candace Three hesitated. She really shouldn't get her hopes up. It was just asking to be disappointed, really, and yet… oh, screw it. If there was even a chance it would work, she wanted to take it - she had to take it. She knew that she was safe, and steadily getting closer to having a working method of getting home, but Phineas didn't… and oh, how he must be worrying. And the kids, too. If this might work - if it had a chance of working, she at least had to try, right? "Alright," she said aloud. "Let's do this."

Other Phineas nodded, and turned on his heel, walking back to the closet. "Sounds good to me. I didn't think you were going to say 'no' anyway, really." He picked up the headset and set it on top of the nearby desk. "I'll go wheel the big manifold out. Here, you can sit in this chair and put this thing on."

She nodded and sat down on the chair he'd pointed out, then reached out and picked up the headset, putting it on and tightening the straps snugly under her chin. The inside of the headset was padded, but it still rested somewhat heavily on her head.

"Alright," Other Phineas remarked again, reappearing behind her. She glanced at him and raised her eyebrows slightly at the large, wheeled console that he'd pushed in front of him.

It was covered in all sorts of dials and all manner of flashing lights aplenty. When he picked up the end of the large cable protruding from the headset and pushed it firmly into the appropriate receptacle on the console, the headset began humming and making her head feel a little tingly. Well, that was probably to be expected... this was going to be closely interacting with delicate brain functions which was not something she would probably have trusted many people to do.

"I've got a reading on your quantum-ion trace," he said. "And your genetics, too. Hafta tone down that part. We will… see how this goes."

"So how is this going to work, exactly?" Three asked as he fiddled with a keyboard protruding from the console. "What do I have to do? Anything?"

"Oh, right," he mumbled to himself. Speaking louder, he continued. "It's not hard - I'll walk you through it. So, you wanna just sit back, and relax, and close your eyes."

"Got it." Candace Three took a deep breath and let it out slowly, leaning back. The weird feeling in the back of her head became stronger, but she decided to resist the urge to scratch it and stay still."

"I'm turning up the power a bit," he said. "I've never connected to anyone from your dimension before, so it might take a bit longer to map a route. And the fact that we're using your genetics even though there's no one else in your dimension with your genetics - and I've got the device set to maximum fuzziness - twenty percent - which is as wide a net as I can realistically cast." He paused for a moment, and she heard a beeping noise or two. "Now, just try to, like, reach out, or something."

She nodded. It couldn't be that hard, right? What was she supposed to be doing - concentrating on reaching her brother's mind, or something? Focus on a memory of him, maybe? She didn't exactly know if any of that would work or not.

"I think we're getting close," he noted. "I'm going to give it a little more power. As long as your brother's asleep right now, this will be our best shot. Concentrate on reaching out to him."

Ha! She'd known she was supposed to concentrate on something. That was, like, how these things worked, right? So… focus on Phineas. Uh… okay? She pictured him in her mind. And his toolbox, because he would never go far without it. (Seriously, she swore that he would have taken that thing in the bed with them if she'd let him.) And perhaps what they'd been doing together before she'd fallen into the non-dimension? Taking down the Ferris Wheel together, yeah. The tingling grew stronger as she tried her best to reach into the black void behind her eyelids. Well, it wasn't guaranteed to work, was it?

"I can't believe it," she heard Other Phineas say distantly, as if he was on the other end of a long tunnel. "We've made…" his voice trailed away.

"Phineas?" she asked. "We've made wha-" She stopped, awkwardly, when she realized that her voice, too, was weirdly echoey… as if she was standing in a big open field. Wait a second…

She opened one eye and took a peek at her surroundings, then opened both wide in shock. The laboratory all around, the heavy headset on her head, the sensation of the chair she was sitting on - were all gone. Instead, she was standing in the middle of a wide open grassy plain. The sky was deep blue, and the grass was fairly tall and really quite soft. It was like a dreamland.

Well, correction. It was a dreamland. Technically.

"We made it!" she shouted, listening to her voice echo and wondering if Other Phineas could hear her. Probably not. Not that she should be calling to him anyway… she should be calling to her own brother. He had to be around here somewhere, right? Well, a casual glance around didn't reveal him to be anywhere. Okay, then… uh, what next exactly? She probably should have asked Other Phineas for more advice on how this thing worked, exactly.

Just as she was thinking that however, a most peculiar thing happened - the sky turned green. And not 'sky before a storm green' no, a bright neon green. And then it was pink. And then orange. And then yellow. And then white. And then red. And it flashed back and forth between all the colors of the rainbow with incredible speed.

"This is incredible!" she heard a distant voice shout, distorted weirdly by echoes. Wait, was that Phineas' voice? It didn't sound exactly like his… it was higher pitched, as if it was a girl's voice? But maybe dreamland had an effect on that. It didn't matter either way. She started hurrying across the grass in the direction of the voice.

"I'm actually having a lucid dream!" it came again. "I always wanted to have one of these and now I am and I can do whatever I want! Oh, oh, oh, I want to fly!"

All at once, the grassy ground dropped away from Candace at a frightening pace, leaving her hanging effortlessly in the sky. She momentarily froze in terror - but didn't fall, instead remaining suspended in the air for no other apparent reason than that she could.

"Hey!" she shouted, awkwardly half-swimming through the air. "Phineas!"

"Can I make it night?" It was suddenly night. "I can! Oh, oh, can I make it… Mars?" … and now they were on Mars. Okay, this was getting out of hand. "Can I make a taco?" Well, nothing happened that Candace could see- "A giant taco?"

-all of the sudden, an enormous taco manifested out of nowhere, landing on the Martian topsoil with an enormous banging noise, kicking up massive clouds of-

"Get out of here, dust! I want a clean giant taco."

-no clouds of dust.

But whatever. Candace had finally made it close enough to Phineas that she could make his features out more clearly - now he would be able to communicate with her and stop having dreams about giant tacos on Mars. "Phineas!" She called out. "I nee…" her voice trailed away.

"Mom?"

Candace gaped wide-eyed and open-mouthed. "Amanda? What are you doing here?"

Her daughter frowned slightly. "In my lucid dream? I mean… I'm supposed to be here, aren't I?" She paused for a second. "Wait… did I create you too? Or - or did my subconscious create you because you've been missing and no one can find you?"

"No, you didn't create me , I'm actually-"

"Disappear!"

Candace raised one eyebrow and Amanda grinned sheepishly. "So I didn't create you after all. You… uh, want some giant taco?" She snapped her fingers and the taco disappeared from behind her. "Actually, since this is a dream, I guess wasting time eating would be pointless. But, wait…" She frowned. "if you're actually here … well, where are you, anyway? I mean, your actual body - because, you know, no one's been able to find you since Wednesday. And how are you getting into my dream?"

Candace grinned slightly at the barrage of questions. "It is actually me ," she replied. "And I do know I've been missing - I fell into a spacetime rift and got trapped in another dimension and there's a machine there that can bridge dimensions to establish mental contact by projecting the sender into the receiver's… lucid dreams."

"You're in another dimension ?" Amanda echoed. "No wonder Xavier and me couldn't find you on Mars or planet Meap or the milkshake bar or any of those other planets. We even got Meap to look for you, but I guess he won't find anything either, then?"

"No, no he won't." Candace paused for a second. "I have no idea how I ended up in your head… the machine's supposed to work on a combo of quantum-ion tracking and genetic matchups and I was trying to reach Phineas but…"

"I don't even know if Dad's asleep," Amanda said. "When I went to bed, he was still on planet Meap talking to the High Council. About getting them to help us find you - 'cause we've been everywhere ." She raised her eyebrows. "We were even planning on going to go into Nowheresville tomorrow looking for you, I mean, Dad guessed you were probably there after the temporal memory disassociation wore off." She shrugged. "But if you said your machine was based on genetics? It would probably go after me anyway."

Candace thought about that for a second. Oh, well, yeah - she hadn't thought of that. The coefficient of inbreeding and all that… Amanda possessed far more genetic material in common with her than Phineas did, due to the… consanguineous nature of Candace and her brother's relationship. It should have been obvious, really, she didn't know how it had slipped past her. "That's true," she said aloud. "I wonder if Other Phineas thought about that. I know I didn't."

"'Other Phineas'?" Amanda's eyes widened slightly. "There's another version of Dad in your - in the dimension you're in? Whoa… that's cool. Is there anyone else? Another you - or a me, even?"

Candace half-smiled. "Yes and yes. There's another version of everyone here, in fact, there's lots of mes in specific because of…" she paused. "...no one seems to know why, actually - we haven't really figured it out yet. But either way, that's not important."

"But it's so cool !" Amanda repeated. "Wait a second, since this is my dream, does that mean I can be as tall as you?" She snapped her fingers again and all of the sudden, Candace found herself looking her daughter directly in the eyes. "Hey, this is neat!"

"I'm sure it is," Candace drawled. "But seriously, listen to me for a second."

"I could never get any growth serums to work," Amanda replied. "I don't know why… it's like the entire universe has been treated with growth serum and now everything's immune to it or something." She shook her head and shrank down to normal size again. "What is it?"

Candace took a deep breath. "Look, when you wake up, I need you to tell your father - and your brother and your uncle and his family and the Meapian Council, I guess? and whoever else is worried about me - that I'm okay. I'm in another dimension, yes, but I'm safe and sound, and what's more, I'm working on a way to get back home. Everything's fine , and I… I miss you all so much, but I'm fine, really. There's no need to worry about me."

Amanda nodded solemnly, which was an unusual look on her. "Is there anything we can do to help you get home? Like, I don't know… perforate spacetime or something?"

"No, you can't do that," Candace replied. "The spacetime continuum's being a pain because it's all beat up for some reason, so we're being careful to design our return method to cause the least amount of spatio-temporal flux disturbance as possible."

"Graphene sheets!"

"Yes, graphene sheets. But seriously - can you do that for me?"

The twelve-year-old girl nodded again. "I can." She hesitated. "I've been worried too, Mom. Scared, even, I - I mean, no one could find you and our memories were all temporally disassociated and - and you know."

Candace felt her heart melt and knelt down, trying to hug her daughter, only to be vastly disappointed when her arms went straight through as if she was a hologram. Well, such were the limitations of mental contact, apparently. She chuckled awkwardly and did a weird hugging-the-air thing that was sort of okay? But hardly enough, even though it would just have to do.

"I - I don't know how much longer I can stay," Candace finally said, standing back up. "I really should get back to work on getting home to you guys. It shouldn't take too much longer… I mean, it's already been like three days. A few more days is my guess at that."

"I lit the garage on fire by accident today," Amanda said, nodding slowly. "I was trying to see if I could crank more speed out of our rocketship and I accidentally set off the engine when it was pointed at the garage wall. Xavier put it out, but there's another huge black splotch on there."

"What's one more?" Candace shrugged. "As long as everyone's okay." She smiled and shook her head. "Look, I really ought to go… not only because I have work to do, but because you need to wake up and tell everybody that I'm okay. Alright?"

The girl nodded. "Wait - before you go, check this out!" She waved her hands in the air dramatically, and all of the sudden, they were standing in the middle of their living room.

The sudden sight of a scene so familiar after far too long without it caught Candace off guard. She blinked rapidly and nodded. "It's nice - it is your lucid dream after all… you can do whatever you want."

"I know, right?" Amanda grinned widely. "Of course, most of this stuff I could do anyway. But in here, it's free! And we don't even have to montage, because it's here instantly."

"Don't even have to montage," Candace agreed. She snapped her fingers, trying to will something into existence, but nothing happened. "Eh. Guess it is projecting me into your dream, after all."

"You have no power here!" Amanda joked.

Candace rolled her eyes. "Seriously, though, I should probably go. I… have no idea how to go, actually." She frowned. Well… this was an unexpected obstacle. Should she just… think about disconnecting? Try to wake herself up? Try to yell again and see if Other Phineas could hear her? A combination of all three?

"Well, we are in my dream," Amanda said. "So if I wake up, then you'll have nowhere to be, and your consciousness should snap back into your body? And since this is a lucid dream, that'll be no problem at all."

"Alright," Candace agreed. "Let's do it, then. Uh… bye, I suppose. See you later? Something like that."

Amanda raised her hand but paused for a moment before doing anything. "Bye, Mom. I'll see you later - love you."

"I love you too." Candace awkwardly waved her hand through the air where her daughter's body was, trying to simulate patting her on the shoulder and probably failing.

"You look funny doing that," Amanda commented, grinning widely. She snapped her fingers. "I wanna wake up."

All at once, the world went black.

-well, it did for about half a second, before Candace sat forwards with a jolt, again feeling the weight of the headset on the top her head and the tightness of the straps beneath her chin, the chair beneath her body, and the subtle humming on the console next to her.

"Well?" Other Phineas asked. "Did it work? How'd it go? Did you make contact with him?"

"I…" Candace paused for a moment to unfasten the chin straps and pull the headset off, setting it down on her lap. "It did work, although I didn't make contact with Phineas ." Which was… well, she really would have loved to have been able to reach her brother directly, but her daughter was just as well. At least now, they wouldn't be worrying so much about her, right? That was the important thing.

Other Phineas frowned slightly. "Then who'd you make contact with?"

"The one person in my dimension who shares the most genetic material with me," she answered. "Our daughter."

"Oh…" He blinked. "You know, I don't know how I didn't realize that would happen." He shrugged, flicking some switches to turn off the machine. "At least it worked - at least you made contact, right?"

"Indeed." Candace stood up stretched. "And I found out that they lit our garage on fire. But everyone's fine."

"I'm… sorry?"

"Eh." Candace shrugged. "We really ought to tear it down and rebuild a new one anyway. It's no big deal - the house is fireproof."

Other Phineas pushed the console along the floor, back against the far wall of the laboratory again. "At least their minds can be more at ease now," he said. "Which was the whole point."

"Yeah. And I managed to catch them before they tried to track me down through the non-dimension, which is definitely a good thing." She paused. "Also, Amanda suggests graphene sheets for the vehicle that's going to get us home."

He raised his eyebrows and smiled slightly. "Well, while you were under, I was drawing up blueprints for a machine to hybridize those with the other material I mentioned. If my rough calculations are correct, then this should be the one."

"That's awesome." She exhaled heavily. "Now I just have to get on the ball and hammer out these last few equations, and we can finish the prototype and start conducting field tests on it."

"Exactly." He nodded. "And from there, well, it's home or bust, I guess."

"Nah." Candace shook her head. "Just 'home', really. There's no other option - at least not any that I'm willing to accept."

Other Phineas nodded, turning to wave slightly in the direction of the stairwell door across the room as Candace Four pushed it open and stepped into the basement. "You know, I know exactly how you feel."

Four waved back, smiling, and crossed the basement floor until she was within the lab floor area. "Hey, Phineas. How are you?" She paused, eyeing the headset resting on the chair behind them. "Three. You guys were messing with the mind transmitter again?"

"Hey yourself," Other Phineas replied. "Yes, yes we were. Three got in touch with her… daughter, actually."

Candace Three saw Four raise her eyebrows slightly. "I did," she confirmed. "It was a bit weird. But also very neat, and, honestly, at least now they'll know to not worry about me. Or at least not as much. And Phineas can stop bargaining with the Meapian High Council to get their help finding me, because apparently that's a thing he's doing." She paused. It wasn't a bad idea, honestly, although the High Council was notoriously set in their ways and rarely able to be swayed. "I was mostly just glad to be able to hear, well, not really a 'familiar' voice, since I've been hearing familiar voices all day, including Amanda's, but it was still great to have a chance to talk with our firecracker." She reached down and patted the metal dome of the headset. "This thing is actually really handy. I like it a lot."

"It's… certainly an interesting device," Four replied, raising an eyebrow. "You know, that's the same one that made me switch places with Five last year."

Candace Three glanced over at Other Phineas. "It is? Huh, I… should probably have figured that out, I suppose. It is within the capabilities of the technology, after all."

"It is," Other Phineas agreed. "But I've basically reworked the whole thing from scratch since then, and gone through every reasonable effort to make sure that doesn't happen again." He paused for a moment, counting beneath his breath. "With all the new safety measures in place, the chance of actually accidentally swapping minds with the person you contact is a mere 0.0000015673 percent - you know, one out of every… about one and half trillion."

"I suppose that's a better safety rate than just about anything else in the world we put our trust in," Candace Three replied. "So I guess it's good enough for me."

"Anyway," Four remarked. "It's getting late now… probably about time to head home, don't you think?"

Other Phineas glanced at Candace Three, then at the desks with the blueprints and plans scattered about on them, then at the large analog clock hanging on the wall. "You're right. I'll be coming with you, then - you'll be alright down here by yourself?"

"Sure," Three replied. "Goodnight, I guess."

"'Night," Four said, turning and heading out the door, followed by Other Phineas who waved briefly at her before letting the stairwell door swing shut behind them.

Candace Three set back down on the desk chair and sighed slightly. At least for now, until Other Phineas returned in the morning, the building would be Candace Two-free. That was a good thing - there was nothing like walking to your bedroom and getting accosted as if you were a space invader or something. Which, in a way of thinking about it, Candace Six was kind of… she wasn't really 'invading', but she was from space. Which sort of fit the bill.

She should probably be heading to bed herself soon anyway - staying up too late would probably just make her more tired in the morning and she didn't want that. She was not a morning person by any means already - staying up as late as they had last night was just asking for trouble.

Besides, at least tonight she could rest easy (well, easier) knowing that her family was… less worried. They knew she was safe now, knew that there was no present harm to her wellbeing or bodily safety. Unless you believed Candace Two, there wasn't, at least.

But no one believed Candace Two.


	30. Strike Two

_This chapter has additional tags to be wary of: **Suicidal Themes, Thoughts, and Characters. Contemplated Extreme Violence and Major Character Death. Mental Breakdown/Near-Breakdown.** Please be careful if these are things you are sensitive to._

 _It's been a month. Whoops. My... my bad._

After another long morning of nothing but misery, the afternoon was at last drawing to a close over... whatever this stupid building was called anyway, something Candace Seven welcomed. At least in the dark, she could get some peace from all her other selves, and their annoying tendency to jump the defense of the wonderful Phineas and Ferb whenever an opportunity presented itself. It was the dumbest thing that Candace Seven had ever seen, really.

The singular other piece of news she welcomed was the realization that that completely deranged Candace Two had shadowed Phineas Four off back to his house of perversion, no doubt fulfil some more of his twisted pleasures.

Because what other purpose was there in existing, other than to please Phineas and Ferb? Nothing, apparently, according to the way these other Candaces kept acting.

But whatever. At least tonight , she'd be able to leave her bedroom without getting jumped in the dark and having her arm twisted behind her back because how dare she try to empty her bladder after bedtime. The horror!

The sooner Candace Two decided to shove off, the better, as far as Candace Seven was concerned.

She went to bed that night in a sour mood. And why shouldn't she? After all, her life was basically ruined for the third time straight. And even if Phineas Four should get his butt in gear for once in his sorry life and actually get her home (which was hardly something she was actually expecting) then she'd still probably wind up losing her job and her apartment. And why? Because her stupid brothers had once again decided to play with something that should not be tampered with, and once again, she was paying the price.

She could hear some of her other selves banging about outside her door for a while, constantly disturbing her. There was some walking and some talking and other assorted annoyances. The bratty little girl opened the door, letting light from the hall stream in and blind Seven as well.

"Get out!" she snapped. "This room is occupied !"

"Sorry - it's not like we knew , geez!" another Candace retorted. She was Three by her nametag, and Candace Seven propped herself up on her arm in the bed, fully ready to take the woman on, when Three rolled her eyes and groaned exaggeratedly. "Come on, One, let's get out here and leave the butthead to herself. We can find another room."

And then she slammed the door.

"You'd better !" Seven yelled after them. "I don't want to see either of you again!" She paused for a moment, feeling miffed when no response came. "Ever!"

Well, whatever, then. Seven dropped back down onto the bed with a disgusted sigh and rolled over to face the wall. She snatched up her pillow and flattened it over her ears, trying to block out any all sounds coming from outside.

She wasn't sure exactly how long she laid like that, but eventually the racket in the hall ceased, and the crack under the door grew dark. And finally, finally , the hallway and the other rooms grew silent. Candace Seven heaved a sigh of relief and put the pillow back under her head, closing her eyes and trying her best to get to sleep - to get at least some rest, before the sun dawned again on this horrible world and the whole miserable process started over at the beginning.

Life was just wonderful.

Peacefully waking up the next morning - undisturbed through the night - was a surprise, to be sure. But not an unpleasant one. The sunlight was coming in through the window of the office, pooling on the floor and brightening the room with the fresh light of a new day. A new day that would probably hold much misery, as all Candace Seven's days since coming here had seemed to do. She stretched, hiccuped once or twice, and crawled off the mattress and pulled herself to her feet.

She probably ought get some food or something right now while she had a chance… it wouldn't be long before you-know-who or even one of the Candaces who loved to drop everything and come to his defense showed up, making the situation go from bad to worse. It was perhaps a bit earlier than she would have preferred to eat, but when had her preferences ever been taken into account anyway?

At the very least, she could focus on the one thing so far that was making this morning a better time than yesterday morning - the lack of Candace Two.

Indeed, that was a good thing. She was able to walk across the hallway, into the stairwell, and down the stairs into the basement, all without seeing or hearing another person - Candace or no Candace. Which was the way she liked it, honestly. She'd been living alone for long enough that she kinda preferred it that way… well, no that wasn't fully true.

What she preferred was being isolated from her once-brothers, and all the damage they'd done, both to her and her life and everything they touched. And if the only way she could manage that was to be all alone, then it was good enough for her in any case.

When she finally reached the basement, the small refrigerator was raided, and she settled down into a chair to eat. Since there was as yet no one down here, she could actually sit at the table for once. It wasn't something that she should be treating as a luxury, really, yet here she was. How far her life had sunk in the end.

And it was all Phineas' and Ferb's fault. But what else was new?

She had just about finished eating when the stairwell door creaked and swung inwards again, revealing another Candace who stepped into the room, yawning widely. Candace Seven's first instinct was to look for a nametag to figure out just who this was. But the Candace wasn't wearing one, and Seven didn't care either way. No one was going to take the right side in this fight, she'd already found to be crystal clear. So it didn't really matter who it was… she wanted nothing to do with them.

The other Candace stared at her, her gaze hardening into a glare when a hiccup pulsed through Seven's body. "Seven."

"What's it to you?"

"Nothing," the other Candace replied resolutely, turning her back and walking directly to the mini-fridge and pulling something out. Instead of going to sit at the table where Seven was, however, she walked past it and into the laboratory area beyond, pushing a chair out with her foot and plopping herself down.

For a few minutes, the other Candace refused to make any sort of eye contact with Seven, and Seven couldn't have cared either way anyway. She turned back to her own food and continued picking away at it, doing her best to ignore the other presence in the room.

But her peace couldn't last for long, and it had been far too few silent minutes when the other Candace spoke up again. "What's your problem with everyone anyway?"

Candace Seven snapped her head around to face her unwelcome companion. "And what business is it of yours, exactly?" She paused for a moment. "Which one are you, anyway?"

The other Candace rolled her eyes. "Three. And I'll tell you what business it is of mine: you're making everyone around you absolutely miserable."

"I would think you of all people would know," Seven spat. "And if you're too thickheaded for that - somehow - then you should at least have learned by now that I couldn't really care less about that anyway."

Three groaned exaggeratedly. "You've really got issues, don't you? Look, would you just quit being so stubborn and rude? Even if you really can't stand our brothers for whatever reason, could it kill you to be a little more, I don't know, polite?"

"They're no brothers of mine," Candace Seven muttered under her breath. "Three, you listen to me. I'm gonna act however I feel like acting, and nobody's going to change my mind on that. When I suddenly become convinced that you all are worth putting a front on for, I'll let you know."

"Seven, you - you… ugh." Three exhaled loudly. "Look, everyone's under a lot of stress right now, you know that? This is an awkward situation for all of us. But we're, you know, mostly handling."

"Oh, I'm sorry ," Seven whined mockingly. "Tell me again about how everyone's under a lot of stress ." She grit her teeth, trying to will her temper away. Losing it on an idiot like Three just wasn't going to be worth it in the end. "You know nothing about me or my life. Nothing , you hear? About what I've been through. So you just shut your mouth and keep your opinions to yourself , where they belong. If I decide I want your opinion, I will ask you for it."

"I don't even know why I tried," Three mumbled to herself, though still loud enough to be audible. She turned and shot a pointed look at Seven, completely dropping any pretext of subtlety she may have had. "She's obviously lost it in the head."

"Alright, you know what?" Seven cried, springing up from the table. "I didn't ask for your thoughts, I didn't want your thoughts, and I don't needyour thoughts. It's not any of your business why I do what I do, if it the others don't like it, well, that sucks for them I guess. Now you shut your trap and play stupid like a good little girl when the boss gets here." She kicked angrily at the chair she'd been sitting on, sending it toppling over, and then, before even giving Three a chance to reply, stormed across the basement floor and into the stairwell.

Whatever. She didn't need to be down there anyway. She'd gotten something to eat - that was all she really cared about. Going back up to the stupid room on the stupid ninth floor - up these stupid twenty flights of stairs - was probably for the best, if it meant that she wouldn't have to see her stupid brother ever again.

Which hope, like pretty much all of hers, had been instantly dashed into pieces before she'd even managed to do so much as get off the freaking stairwell.

She taken all of about three steps up the first flight of stairs when the door onto the floor one level above her - the ground floor - opened, and she heard several people walk in.

"How much do you wanna bet somebody'll already be down there?" a voice - a Candace voice - said.

"Somebody, probably," another voice replied - one that immediately made Seven narrow her eyes in exasperation and general antipathy. Everyone's favorite brother, because everyone here was either purposefully obtuse or just normal obtuse, and Seven hadn't figured out which one was the best option. Either way, she'd had to bunk with them for three nights in a row now, she was starting to determine that number would not be allowed to grow much higher if she valued her sanity.

She'd stopped walking entirely on the landing of the first flight of stairs, waiting for Candace Four and her brother to walk past her. Maybe, if she was lucky and they were feeling exceptionally stupid today, they'd walk right past her without even noticing her.

But of course that wasn't going to happen either - it would be too convenient and easy for her, and she wasn't allowed anything of the sort.

"Hey, Seven," Phineas said. The sound of his voice alone was enough to sour her mood, really - it was a perfect reminder of everything she'd had taken from her by him, which was not something she needed to be reminded of to have constantly in the forefront of her mind.

To her credit, though, she decided to take the high route anyway - refusing to grace his grossly provocative remarks with so much as a look in his direction as she shoved her way past. You know, for everything she'd gone through, she was still a lot nicer to to everyone than they deserved. Five was lucky for that, or she'd have ended up with a lot worse than a black eye and a bruised ego.

"Watch it!" Candace Four exclaimed as Seven pushed her out of the way and continued up the stairs. "You have a brain, I assume - I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if you started using it for once."

"Candace-" Phineas started to say, turning to his sister.

Candace Seven wasn't sure what he was about to say, but she wasn't going to listen to him say it either. She'd heard five words from his mouth so far today - and that was six words too many, really. He'd done enough damage in her life that she figured demanding he shut up for once around her was fair game. (Not that he ever respected fairness or justice or kindness or any of those things - those were for lesser lifeforms, below his supreme greatness, dontcha know?)

"Now you listen here," she snarled, whirling around mid-step to face him. "Whatever you're about to say right now, you take it and you shove it in the closest toilet you can find because that's where it belongs - with all the other crap that normal people don't want to deal with it." She could see him getting ready to say something else - because of course he would, hardly being the type to actually get hints - and cut him off again. "Did you not hear what I just said? You know, sometimes I think the only way you'll ever get your brain working is if someone just beats one into you - maybe I should do that sometime. Couldn't hurt, at least - what's the worst case scenario? The world could probably benefit from a few more… vegetables, you know?"

"Now, you'd better take that back this instant !" Candace Four snapped, starting towards her. "Before I make you - and you will not like the way I do that."

Phineas reached out and grabbed ahold of his sister's arm. "Candace… come on." He shot a glance in Seven's direction, but she narrowed her eyes and refused to budge even an inch. This was her position, and she was justified for it. Much worse had been done to others in the name of justice. Even if, in her heart, she knew that she would never be able to do such a thing - not with his stupid inventions to protect - it'd never stopped her from fantasizing about it before, and it wasn't going to now, either.

Part of what made those fantasies so virulent might well have been the knowledge that none of them would ever be permitted to come to pass. If there were any two people in the universe above the law, for whom retribution would never seek to collect its debt, to whom justice turned a blind eye to their many crimes… it would be the two ingrates she'd once called her brothers.

Of course, it had only been these past few days that had really brought these thoughts to her mind anyway - or perhaps to her conscious mind, because now that they were here, they felt as natural and as deserved as any could well be.

Phineas finally broke eye contact and turned away, pulling his sister behind him, who continued glaring at her all the way down the stairs, but finally muttered something under her breath and turned away as well - as they both disappeared into the basement.

"Idiots," Seven spat after them. She shook her head irritably, spinning on her feet, intent on heading back up the stairs. Only, she wasn't alone just yet.

And of course she wouldn't be - those two… people could never go anywhere without there omnipresent shadow, Candace Two, who was now standing silently smack in the middle of the stairwell, blocking Seven's progress, her eyes as invisible as always.

"Get out of my way," Seven snapped, elbowing her out of the way. Or at least making an attempt… unlike Candace Four, Two remained unmoved, scarcely looking to have to make any effort at all to resist the shove.

"I would like you to clarify something for me," Two remarked, her voice somehow even more icy than usual. "Am I to believe my ears in that you dared to threaten the wellbeing of my charge?"

"Excuse me?" Seven echoed. "I don't have time for this. Get out of my way, you lunatic."

"No, excuse me ," Two replied, her hand shooting out and seizing Candace Seven's shoulder in a vice like grip. "Now, I am going to say this one time, and one time only , so I would advise you to keep it mind."

"Let go of me!" Seven exclaimed, trying to yank herself away, out of the grasp. It did not work - even though Two's eyes were invisible, her strangely pasty face had a faint tinge of red to it, and she slammed Seven's back against the wall of the stairwell.

"Now let's get something straight." Two put her face so close to Seven's that Seven could just about make out her soulless red eyes through the dark lenses covering, and she definitely feel the hot breath in her face as Two hissed at her. "I do not care what you get up to. I do not care what you do. I do not care about you ."

"Then why don't you act like- aggh!" And she couldn't breathe.

Two's face had remained unchanged, her eyes still unwavering through the lenses - but she'd brought her stick higher and shoved it hard against Seven's throat, collapsing her windpipe in an instant. Seven felt herself turning red and she struggled as best as she knew how, but it was clear which of the two of them was the stronger, and it was a losing battle from the start.

"Are you done ?" Two hissed. "You will not interrupt me again, do you understand ?"

For a moment more, Seven resisted, but the pounding in her ears and the tingling in her arms quickly grew to be too much. Mustering as hateful a glare as she knew how, she nodded. Two relaxed the stick slightly, just enough to let the air get through Seven's throat, and she gasped loudly for breath, swallowing hard.

If looks could kill, there was no doubt somebody would have dropped dead right then, but although looks wouldn't do it, being choked out by that stupid stick could, and so all Seven could really do was glare. And if Two's face - which was still just inches away from hers - was anything to go by, it wasn't a particularly effective method of self-defense.

Two was silent while Seven struggled to regain herself and refill her lungs. "Now as I was saying," she continued, as coldly as ever.

Seven boiled inside, indiscriminate rage bubbling up inside her veins. Still, with that stick pressed up against her throat and Two all up in her space, she was forced to content herself merely by imagining Two getting hit by a bus - or three - and remaining silent.

"I am going to return home," Two was saying. "And as distasteful as you might find it, Four's brother is my shot at that. I have been fighting Doofenshmirtz over my own brothers' safety, and the safety of my home, for thirty-five years now. I will not allow him to succeed now - and I will not allow you to compromise me, either. Four's brother is under my protection, and though I will attempt to honor his requests and avoid conflict with you all, I will not hesitate to dismember you on the spot if I ever catch you so much as touching a single hair on his head, his feelings be damned. You will beg me to kill you before I am through with you. Do I make myself clear ?" There was a moment or two of silence in the stairwell. Seven was staring daggers at Two, but didn't dare to say anything, Even though she could think of any number of things she would like to say, she knew it probably wasn't worth the effort. " Answer me ," Two demanded. "If you don't understand , I can demonstrate for you."

"I… understand ," Seven spat, her voice coming out breathily and high-pitched.

For a minute or so more, no words were spoken, although Two didn't budge an inch, her eyes boring into Seven's as if she was hunting for traces of fear. If that was the case, she wasn't going to find any. Seven had common sense (unlike pretty much everyone else around here) to know that trying to fight back against Two wouldn't have any desirable consequences. Even that brat Six had learned that lesson.

But she wasn't afraid of her, not for a second. She'd stared the cessation of her very existence in the eye for almost two years now. If Two thought she was going to be intimidated, then she was sadly mistaken.

Finally, at long last, Two relaxed the pressure of her stick, and took a step back, letting Seven down from the wall. "Good. Then we won't have any issues moving forward." And she turned on her heel and followed Phineas and Candace Four down the stairs in the direction of the basement, her footsteps echoing in the stairwell as she walked away. Her foot caught on... something? on the landing, and she stumbled, but then caught herself against the wall before falling.

Candace Seven breathed deeply, wincing and gingerly rubbing her sore throat as she stood alone on the stairs. There were no mirrors here - not that it mattered anyway. She'd not been able to see anything except a ball of distortion in mirrors ever since becoming an anomaly, and that wasn't going to change now.

"This," she grumbled. " This is why everyone hates you, Phineas."

If this morning had been half-decent, it was definitely not now. First Three and then Four, and this ? She shouldn't even have been surprised, honestly. Phineas probably told Two do that anyway - it seemed like something he would do. There were probably cameras in here, so that he could watch her torment over and over to his heart's content, weren't there?

Why, of all people in the world, did she have get to stuck with this? How much different - how much better would the world have been if, on that fateful night thirty-something odd years ago, Linda Flynn had taken birth control - or simply not been 'in the mood'? She didn't know (and would likely never get to see) but she had a pretty good idea nonetheless.

Ah, that would be the good life, wouldn't it? A life for her , not for trying to survive the ravages of Phineas and Ferb . If only she'd been so lucky. If only.

But it was a life that she was never going to have. Because the damage had been done - damage that even time travel was powerless to repair, damage that she would have to live with for the rest of her pathetic pseudo-existence, damage that had been maliciously inflicted upon her for no other reason than because it had been fun to do so.

She could only hope that no one would disturb her any more today. She wasn't exactly how much more she could take, honestly. The idea of just throwing in the towel on this whole thing was sounding increasingly attractive, honestly. What did she have to lose, really? Anything important? Not exactly.

There'd be another long fight with the government in this dimension, too, as they tried their best to figure who she was and she'd managed to sneak into the country. But she'd been through it once, and she could do it again if she had to. This blasted dimension was close enough to hers that, maybe, if she put enough distance between herself and Danville again, she might be able to forget all about it and just live out whatever miserable life she had left in relative peace.

The door onto the ninth floor of the building was quickly becoming well-worn by now. For the first little bit, it had been stiff, as if it wasn't used much, but that had changed rapidly, and it now swung freely, almost loosely, as she kicked it open and stepped onto the ninth floor. If someone was up here and tried to accost her...

Thankfully, there was no one, at least in the hallway. One of the doors at her left hand stood ajar, and from inside it she could hear some sort of noises playing. A single aside glance determined that it was the little girl playing with some gadget.

The thought of going in there and taking the whatever-it-was flitted across Seven's mind. It would be easy, really, like taking candy from a baby. And it wasn't like the little brat would be able to stop her. One was just a kid, after all, it wasn't like she could wrestle down a full-grown adult. It'd be like Seven trying to wrestle a… an alligator or something.

Nevertheless, for now, she just couldn't be bothered. Maybe later, if she started feeling like it for some reason. Really, if she felt like taking out her anger on someone who would be powerless against her, she did have a target there. But that wouldn't help her situation any, now would it? So what if she drained the cup of her righteous anger on the one person here whom she could actually physically force to drink it? It wasn't going to get her existence back - it wasn't going to get her life back - it wasn't going to get her family back - it wasn't going to get her anything back.

All it would do would be to give Phineas the satisfaction of knowing that he'd finally lived up to his opening sequence and driven her insane… and that was something she was fully determined to never do. Perhaps it would be easier if she just let herself go off the deep end. She could recall many times when she could've sworn that she heard it calling out to her - calling for her to let go and sink into the abyss that was mental psychosis, where she would, at last, hurt no more.

But no - she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction . No matter what she was put through, she wouldn't allow herself to lose it - because she just knew that was what he wanted, and she'd never given him anything that he hadn't taken from her. And maybe someday he would came around and take her sanity too. But she would make him take it - no one here was losing anything, not if her willpower had anything to say about the matter.

She stalked silently past the open door, farther down the hall to the room that she'd claimed as her own. It was pretty much identical to the other rooms, with the sole exception of having two stacked mattresses for her to sleep on whereas everyone else got only one - the second one having originally been intended for the kid after Seven had thrown her out of the room the night before last.

Thrown her out in defense of Five, too. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to have just stayed out of whatever was going on when she'd walked in.

Pushing the door of her room open, however, her face immediately darkened and her mood immediately worsened - if such a thing was even possible. (It was, although just barely.)

"Five," she spat into the room.

Five jumped as if she'd seen a mouse, spinning around to face Seven directly. "Oh - it's you ."

Candace Seven smirked slightly at Five's one discolored eye. "Indeed. And as you may have noticed, you're not welcome here anymore. So why don't you walk your sorry little self right out this door and off to whatever garbage heap you belong in?"

Five's face flushed. "I…" She stopped and took a deep breath. "...am better than this. I don't need you to validate me anymore."

"Right," Seven returned sarcastically. "I guess we both know who exactly you've got now, hmm? Tell me, Five, how do long you think you'll be able to resist what we both know Phineas wants?" She paused for a second. "I'm betting on… three days, if you're exceptionally stubborn. Although considering how readily you stabbed me in the back, perhaps that isn't a very safe bet, is it?"

"You know what - I am not having this conversation with you," Five shot back. "I have been listening to your rants about this for almost three days now… and I don't have to take it anymore." She tossed her head disdainfully and strode out of the room.

"Rants?" Seven echoed after her. She leaned out into the hallway and talked after Five. "You do know what's waiting for you, don't you? Oh, wait - that's what you want , isn't it? I suppose perfection incarnate isn't good enough for you, no, your only purpose in existing is to provide some flavor to Phineas' life, isn't it? Isn't it ?"

But Candace Five said nothing in return, pulling open the stairwell door and disappearing inside of it.

"Well, whatever," Seven grumbled. "I'm not going to waste my breath on her - she's clearly lost it."

How anyone in their right mind could look at Phineas and not be filled with revulsion at his blatant disregard for others' safety, at his carelessness with reality itself, at his perverted desires, at his endless depths of spite and apathy towards the suffering of others that didn't immediately affect him… Candace Seven couldn't quite comprehend it. If there was any person she'd met deserving of her hatred, he was definitely the one.

And she'd always thought that Five was too naive, hadn't she? And she'd been right, too - all it had taken was for push to come to shove a little bit, for a situation to require that she actually stand up and have a spine for once, and she'd folded like tissue paper. Another win for Phineas and Ferb, Seven supposed, as if they needed another one.

Well, they could have Five - she was dead to Seven now. The important part, really, was that no matter what happened, while she had any say in the matter… they were never going to get her. She knew that wasn't going to go over well, after all, Phineas and Ferb were oftentimes nothing more than obnoxious overgrown children, and being denied even this one small thing would no doubt lead to some sort of temper tantrum the likes of which the world had never seen.

It was pathetic how predictable they were, really - and even more pathetic was the sorts of things about which they were predictable.

But none of that really mattered now, did it? For … well, there really was no 'better' here, was there? For the worse, then, it had happened, as she'd expected, and despite her efforts to forestall it.

The only real question now was what she should do about it. Well, not about it exactly, but more so what she should do in general. The short-term plan that everyone was trying to foist onto her was 'wait around until the infallible Phineas makes everything better like he always does', but to say that Candace Seven was unconfident in that plan was almost certainly the understatement of the year.

It smacked a lot of things which she had no desire to become a part of, that was for sure. Like, seriously - one second Phineas is unveiling his desires to commit incest with and impregnate his sister - and then, in practically the same breath, he begins to 'strongly encourage' a plan that involved all of them being cooped up in a single building - a building to which he had unfettered access to every nook and cranny - a building in which he encouraged them to sleep (and in separate rooms, no less?)

Now, it hardly seemed like a stretch to believe that there was something shady going on here - and it was not something she wanted to be involved in. Still, what was her alternative? Flight was the only other option she had available.

It was something she had done before, and so she knew it was possible. It was something she'd done twice , and so she knew how to handle it. That didn't, of course, mean that it was in any way fun or enjoyable or easy. But it was definitely something she would be willing to do, if it ever came down to it.

Sure, the dimension to which Candace Four belonged was a completely alien place to her, but then again, so had been the Quad-State Area, no? And she'd managed just fine there, and she could manage just fine here.

It would be a pain, for sure. It wasn't really something she would have preferred to do - but who would prefer to be turned out into the street with only the clothes on their back and the junk in their pockets for the third time over less than two years? It had been one long nightmare, really, but it was a nightmare she was more than willing to face down again.

Not to mention the fact that here, she wouldn't be quite so destitute, apparently. With Candace Two and Four and Phineas off to do whatever after dark, it would be rather easy to sneak around this building under cover of shadow and carry off things that would make her newly homeless (again) life much easier for the third time around.

A stapler or perhaps some of the food down in the basement? Sure, whatever. What would be more helpful, though, would be go back down to one of the other floors - the floors with offices that were being used - and to get a big box from somewhere, and fill it with things that were valuable on their own.

Now, Candace Seven actually had a bit of experience in this area, as it turned out. Before she'd been erased - back when she'd still had a life - she'd never been able to satisfy her thirst for busting. It had been something that stuck to her like glue throughout her whole life, but it first reallybecame an issue when she'd moved out of the house on Maple Drive to move in with Jeremy after they had been engaged. For a few long, long days it plagued her, worsening to a point where she had begun to feel physically ill over it. But, then - Jeremy had come to the rescue with a revolutionary idea: to take up a job where she could fulfil those urges.

Specifically, law. It was an amazing idea, and Candace had taken to it like a fish to water. There was no one in her college classes who could come close to matching her. She'd graduated with high honors and quickly risen to being one of the more well-known prosecution attorneys in the greater Tri-State Area. She'd spent her entire life practicing for it, more or less, and no matter who she was chasing through the court system, one thing was assured: that she would never rest until they were thoroughly busted , and the hammer was brought down in full force.

And with every victory she had, it had felt almost like a bit of her childhood failures in this regard were being justified.

Of course, all that had been lost after she was erased - but it was still in her brain . And although most of what she'd learned as a prosecutor was useless here, there were a few things that would be surprisingly relevant to her situation.

Namely this one case The State vs. Georgetown Electronics, Incorporated , which, (although no one remembered it happening now) had been a great milestone for her at the time. She'd almost single handedly brought down the corrupt conglomerate to its knees for tax fraud and evasion and more importantly: corporate espionage . And it had been in the process of that case that she'd learned exactly what kinds of things were valuable to companies. It wasn't hardware fixtures or buildings or employees, even - it was all the juicy information you could find squirreled away in payroll charters and employee contracts and prototype drawings and internal fiscal data and shareholder charts - things that were supposed to be sealed behind NDAs, of course.

But - if someone should just so happen to get ahold of those things, and perhaps were to leak them to someone else? Everything would be turned upside down in an instant.

So maybe she rethink this, really. She wouldn't be poor and homeless - far from it. If she were to pull something on this scale off, she would rich . The kind of things she might be able to get ahold of… there would be many, many people willing to fork over suffocating amounts of cash to get access to them.

And yeah, it was a bit under the table. No, scratch that, she knew from her own experience that it was a straight-up felony on at least five levels. But, really, considering who would be the victims of such a scheme? She was just about to the point of considering it worth it. And, of course, she already had enough of a bargaining chip just in knowing about Phineas' and Candace Four's… perversions.

Incest was gross, disgusting, and repellant. It was also a felony. (In most places. She'd probably want to double-check the exact statutes for this specific area before executing this part of the plan, but it was a felony in 96% of the country. What were the odds that the Tri-State Area was in that measly 4%? Not high.) And a simple DNA test on either of the… ugh, the children she'd seen yesterday afternoon would be prove beyond all reasonable doubt in a court of law that those two were guilty .

Oh, that would be sweet irony right there, for sure.

Of course, she'd need to present enough evidence of it to a court to get the court to order a DNA test… which would probably be difficult. But she could do it. Busting people - first her brothers, and then criminals - had been what she'd done for a long time now. And if there was anything that she was sure of, it was that this was one of the most golden busting opportunities she'd ever seen in a long time. It was like it was being handed to her on a silver platter, really, and she was just about to reach out and take it.

It had been almost two years since she'd had a chance to really 'bust' someone, really… although it hadn't really affected her as much this time. That urge to bust that she'd had for so long had sort of… faded over the years, more or less, until one day she'd woken up, and like a light switch had been flicked off in her brain, it had been gone.

But that didn't matter - because right now she wasn't thinking of busting for the sake of it, or to fulfill an old lifelong obsession. She was weighing this as an option because it was the right thing to do, really. When you took someone so - who was an awful a human being as was the person she had once called her 'brother', there was no way you could say he didn't deserve it for what he'd done to her.

Only one tiny thread held her back from fully committing to the idea, really.

And that thread was that, even more so than seeing him busted, even more so than exacting revenge, even more so than seeing him suffer through a fraction of the pain she'd endured… Candace Seven just wanted to get away . To be done.

Because the truth was? She wanted nothing more than to never see or hear or think of 'Phineas and Ferb' again. That was what she truly wanted, and if she'd had anything at all to give up, she'd have given it up in a heartbeat to get that wish to come true.

She'd suffered too much - had taken too much abuse, absorbed too much torture. Would it be so hard for them to just let her go ? As pretty much downright… destitute as her life had been for these past two years, it had nonetheless been tolerable. And most importantly, it had had noinfluence of Phineas and Ferb whatsoever to be found in it. For the first time in her life, really, she'd been free .

And yeah, she hadn't had anyone. And she hadn't even technically existed. And she'd lost everything she had to lose, but… the freedom . It had been there, too - she'd tasted it. And some days, it had been the only thing that had kept her sane. Knowing that no matter how bad things got from here, there would be no Phineas, no Ferb, not ever.

Candace Seven heaved a huge sigh as she lazily reclined on the mattress on the floor. The truth was, rather ironically, that she simply despised them so much that even going out and seeking after revenge simply wasn't worth it - not for all time she'd have to spend thinking about them again, acknowledging their existence again.

Why couldn't she just go back to that time when it had been possible, for the brief moments of peace in between her hiccups, for her to stare up at the ceiling of her apartment and pretend that she'd been an only child?

Right now, that was the only thing that she really and truly wanted. The only thing. To just… be left alone .

All of the sudden, the door to the room swung open. "Seven, are you in here?"

Candace Seven blinked, jerking herself into upright position. Oh, you had to be kidding right now.

"Why," she growled. "On Earth do you think I would want to talk to you?"

Phineas took a step inside the room, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Two, can you give us… some privacy here?"

Candace Two was rocking back and forth on her feet as if caught in a strong wind. She leaned heavily into her staff, steadying herself as it bent under her weight. "Nnnno."

He blinked. "C'mon, Two, can you just stand outside the door like you do in the basement?"

"No."

"Pleas-"

"My decisions are not up for debate. Thishhh conver - con - conversation is over."

Phineas sighed. "Fine, I guess I'll leave the door open then." He glanced at Seven and shrugged, making some sort of face. "Sorry."

"I don't want your condescension," Seven spat. "Did you not hear…" she hesitated. Candace Two was right there, after all. "...me the first time when I said that?"

"I did," he replied. "And I… am not here to condescend to you, I promise."

"'I'm not here to condescend to you'," Seven repeated mockingly. "I'll tell you what: I'll believe it when I see it. Which will be never, because you just don't know how to do that, do you?"

Phineas scrunched his brow for a moment. He must have been deciding what would be the cruelest, most heartless thing to say, Candace Seven thought. What would it be this time? She could hardly wait to find out. "Look, Sev - Candace. I can see you… don't like me very much. I can see that you're having a hard time. I don't know what it's like to be a temporal anomaly, of course, but I know how they work, and I'm sure it's an awful thing." He paused for a second, shuddering slightly. "I can't imagine it. The point is: no one should have to deal with these sorts of things alone. And I know you don't like me, but I'll still try to be there to do… whatever, if you need it, okay?"

"Wh - what?" Seven spluttered, completely dumbfounded. "What are you even talking about? You - you ingrate ! You 'don't know what it's like to be a temporal anomaly'. No, of course you don't! You wouldn't - because you made me find out instead. Did you ever stop to think of me? How being erased from existence would affect me, would hurt me, would completely destroy my life? No, of course you didn't. Because you've never thought of those things before, and why would you start then?" She snorted. "And why should I start now? 'Don't like you', my rear end. I hate you, Phineas, with every fiber of my being that is left to me after everything you did to me."

"Candace," he started. "Look, I… ordinarily, I'd ask you what I did wrong, and why you 'hate' me so much. But I can see that would just lead to you reciting a long list of grievances, and me not being able to say much about it because I don't know what your brothers did, or why they did it, and I probably couldn't convince you of what must have truly motivated them even if I did know. So what I'll ask you instead is this: Is there anything I can do now, to make things right? Is there anything I could do that would make you no longer view me as the enemy out to get you?"

"I'll tell you what you can do," she snarled bitterly. "There's an empty elevator shaft out there just itching to have somebody jump down it. How tall do you think it is? A hundred feet? Two hundred? Either way works."

"I'm serious , Candace," he repeated.

"So was I," she muttered under her breath. "Well, let me think . Can you undo the erasal of my existence? Can you bring back everything I lost? Can you recreate my timeline, my life, my family, my husband, my children, my everything ?" She crossed her arms. "Can you sincerely apologize for the torment you constantly put through? For making me lie awake at night wishing that you had never been born? That's not how you're supposed to feel about quote unquote 'family' you know that, right, you windbag? But I was never family to you anyway, was I? What was I - a guinea pig, something to experiment on and torture just for fun - a brainless facet of existence that existed only to amuse you and give you something to have sex with? I don't think so."

Phineas was still standing silently, leaning against the wall of the office. "Look, Candace, I… don't know where you've gotten these ideas. But they're not true, I promise, at least not about me . I know you're disturbed about… my sister and I, but that really has no bearing on this subject. I'm not trying to force you to follow in her footsteps, really, I'm not. I just…" He sighed. "I just can tell that you're upset about something - about being a temporal anomaly? - and as an anomaly, I know that you're… not in company. So I'm here to say that I'll be that company if you need it. To - to talk about whatever. Or just to be someone you can take your anger out on, if that helps."

Candace Seven was about ready to explode . "What on Earth makes you think I would want your company?! Does the bank manager want the company of the thief who left him broke? Does a grieving widow want the company of the axe murderer who chopped her husband to bits in front of her eyes? Do I want the company of the ones who made me this way ?" She could feel herself trembling with unbridled rage. "The answer is no , because I know you're too stupid to gather it on your own! I do not - not now , and not ever , you hear me?! What I want from you is for you get your stupid self out of my life, for good, and never come back. The best days of my life are the ones where I forget you exist. And I want more days like that - I want every day like that!" She could see him opening his mouth but she wasn't done - not yet. "You ruined me, Phineas . I had a life and you took it. I had an existence and you took it. I had a family and you took it . And you have the audacity to come up here with your ramble about 'being here'?! Oh, trust me, you insufferable idiot, I know what comes when you're around, and it's nothing good. All you do , all you live for , is to see me suffer! Day in, day out, and don't you dare try to deny it, either."

"Look," he replied softly, holding up his palms. "Candace, I don't know-"

"You're exactly right!" she yelled, with such volume that Phineas took a step back in shock. "You don't know, and you never will! All you know is to make me suffer, isn't it?! Isn't it ?! Why don't you just kill me, then? It could hardly be worse than this. At least then I'd finally be out of your reach. But, nooo, that would be too kind for me, wouldn't it?! I don't deserve such mercy , do I? Then fine ! Whatever ! I do not care anymore . But I don'twant to see you - I don't want to hear you, to think of you. The things you have done to me are not things you forgive for. And I will never forgive you. You're not worth it. One day you're bored, and so you casually exterminate an entire timeline, causing the cessation of existence of everyone and everything inside it - of my family , my husband , my children , of everything that I ascribed any value to. And you expect me to forgive you?"

"I'm not asking for your forgiveness," Phineas said slowly. "What happened to you is not something that happens for overnight, if at all. But I'm just asking you what I can do, right now, to make it apparent to you that I'm not your enemy."

"And I already told you what to do," Seven retorted acidly. "Go jump in a lake . Of fire . Because that is where you are going to end up anyway, and you deserve it."

Phineas opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything. "I'm sorry," he said. "Obviously I made some… inaccurate assumptions before coming up here. I'll - I'll go now." He turned around. "Come on, Two, let's go back to the basement."

Candace Two didn't say a single word, but obediently turned and followed her master anyway, just as Seven was expecting her to do.

"You do that," she spat after their retreating figures. "And don't you ever speak to me again or I'll - I'll do something. " Again, with Candace Two being right there.

But although Phineas was gone, her anger was not. The sheer presumption in his attitude rankled beneath her skin in a way that only served to throw more fuel on an already blazing fire. He was a murderer , no more, no less. It was his fault that she'd celebrated her twins' birthday alone this May, his fault that she'd slept alone in a bed for the last two years, his fault that the Christmas presents she'd purchased for her family last year had gone unopened and were still sitting in a pile on her apartment's living room floor, untouched, collecting dust, waiting for the day on which the people's whose names were written on the tags would tear aside the yellowing wrapping paper and be filled with joy at the surprises within.

That was all his fault, and so much more, too.

Was it any wonder that she hated him so? No, no it was not. For all the hatred she could muster up, he deserved tenfold. And if those other Candaces couldn't see it, well, that was their problem. Something inside Candace Seven was broken. It had been broken, ground into paste, dried into a powder, and scattered into the wind. The earth had been turned and salted, and nothing would ever grow there again.

The sun had been extinguished, and the stars suffocated out. No light would ever again illuminate the wasteland inside her. There was no stirring in the air, no creeping rays of hope or cheer. The four horsemen of the apocalypse had come, and had found nothing left to ravage. She had nothing left to lose.

This was her life, and it was not a life worth living.

How many times had she stood before a mirror, looking endlessly into the blurred static mess staring back, and begun to say the five words that would end it all?

"Why?" she would say. "Why do - why do I still…"

But she never could bring herself finish it. And she cursed her own cowardice, her own fear of what lay beyond, in the great unknown.

That was it. This was the final straw. She could take it no longer. She could take this no longer. As soon the sun fully set again, as soon as darkness fell, she was going. Going to run, run far away, to someplace where she would never be found.

And she wouldn't seek revenge. Because she didn't want revenge. She wanted out - she wanted to be alone. The Phineas and Ferb of this dimension could do what they wanted, however they wanted. She would be gone. Who knew where? She didn't know.

She wanted to be away. Away from … from everything. From everyone, in a place where no living thing would ever disturb her again. Maybe she would steal a time machine and travel ten billion years into the future, when every living thing on Earth, every living thing in the solar system, when the sun and stars themselves were dead.

And the blackness and frigidity of that time would match the blackness and frigidity in her soul. And maybe, then, at last, she would find peace.


	31. The Danville Directive

For everything that had gone in the past few days, Candace One was over it. The traveling beyond her own universe? The meeting of the other versions of herself? The discovery that no less than three of the other versions of herself were actually, factually in the process of committing incest with their younger brothers - and all the fighting and the yelling that had resulted from such a horrific discovery? No... Candace One was pretty well over it.

She was, in fact, starting to grow a bit restless, even. Her life at home was a wildly unpredictable one in most aspects, really, and pretty much all of that time she hated it. And she still did, she was pretty sure.

But for the past month and a half, that wild unpredictability had changed into anything but. Every morning was the same morning. Every day was the same day. People said the same lines, moved in the same direction, made the same decisions. And when the clocks hit midnight of the last day of summer, it would just start all over again: 12:01 AM, September 22nd, 2038. The day of summer that was supposedly the last day, as was supposedly the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that.

It was an endless cycle of looping time, repetitive motions, and infinitely repeating sequences. And she'd been trapped, the only one in the whole universe, apparently, who could perceive the disasters going on all around them. Well, maybe Vanessa's dad had also been able to? He had been pretty close to the machine when she turned it on - and inside that purple bubble it had created. (Not to mention that she was pretty sure that musical number she'd sang on the first time loop had been a duet. Which meant that somewhere, someone was singing the other half.)

But whether or not Vanessa's dad had been in the time loops or out had made of difference in the end, although it would have been nice to know beforehand, for sure. It would have been nice to know a lot of things beforehand, really, not the least of which would have been 'Pushing this button will force you to relive the same day seventy-four times in a row and on the seventy-fifth, will dump you outside the universe itself where you will meet a bunch of absolute crazies. Crazies who are actually just you from other dimensions, and who are all way, way older than you, because why not?

And the first day - first few days, even, had been an absolute roller coaster. What between Candace Two claiming that Vanessa's dad was some sort of evil villain; Candace Three claiming that all Candaces were supposed to be able to invent like Phineas and Ferb; Candace Four claiming that her brothers' smelly, lazy platypus was, in fact, some sort of secret agent; Candace Six spinning these long stories about outer space; Candace Seven being a temporal anomaly, and the fact there even was someone named 'Kevin' at all, it had been insane. And that wasn't even touching on the subject of her younger brothers, which was something all the other Candaces seemed to hold very strong, and very different opinions, ranging from one extreme all the way to the other - from Candace Seven who claimed (and acted) as if she hated Phineas' guts for something that Candace One still hadn't figured out, to Candaces Three and Four, who claimed that they loved him … far, far more than what was right or appropriate in any way, shape, or form.

Candace Six… well, she got a tiny bit of slack in that regard, given that she hadn't known Phineas was her brother until they were already engaged to be married , but she was definitely not entirely off the hook either. How Candace Six could have ignored the knowledge that Phineas was her brother and straight-up married him after discovering that was… not something Candace One could understand.

And, really, it was just piling no end of worry onto Candace One's back. She wanted to get home. She wanted that more than anything in the world right now… but she knew full well what was waiting for her there. Her brothers - the ones she loved deeply, and the ones she knew loved her, of course, but now a terrible question had been raised in Candace's mind: to what extent that reached.

And Candace Four's - Four's children had not helped that any, what with their insistence on digging into completely harmless incidents in Candace's life and tacking all kinds of incesty meanings to them, meanings that were not there, she swore. She hoped with all of her heart.

Of course there wasn't anything. This was her brother she was thinking about. Phineas wasn't interested in this kind of stuff, she knew. And definitely not in this kind of stuff with her , his older sister . That was crazy.

...but the seed had been planted, and no matter hard she dug for it, Candace One could not manage to root it out. And it frightened her, really. She was in love with Jeremy - she didn't - couldn't deal with this.

And that wasn't even touching on the Mysterious Force either, which, according to Candace Six, was somehow invested in it as well. Invested in pushing Candace One and her brother together in - in a romantic way.

She didn't like to think about that. She didn't like thinking about any of it, really, or what it implied.

Thankfully, for the time being, it was something she could ignore - could box up and shove to the back of her mind and try to forget about. It wouldn't be that way forever. But it was that way, and she was determined to try and take full advantage of that while she could.

That determination was perhaps part of the reason that she was getting so restless, however. Because with Candace Four's brothers and Candace Three working on getting them all home, there really was not much for a fifteen-year-old to do in an office building, of all places. She would have really loved something to do. Of course, she usually spent her time trying (and failing, but that was beside the point, because she was going to succeed someday ) to bust her brothers for whatever crazy contraption they were building that day. In between bust attempts, she also spent time poking about the Googolplex with Stacy and sometimes hiding behind that one plastic plant in the Googolplex food court where she could use her binoculars to watch Jeremy while he was working. (He was so adorable in that weiner hat, really he was.)

But other than that, well, she didn't really do all that much. Busting her brothers was her driving passion in life, really, it was what most of her time was devoted to. And since she couldn't do that here , well, it really was leaving her very, very bored.

At least Candace Three had decided to let One borrow her phone last night. The battery indicator on it had said 'twenty-three percent remaining', which wasn't a lot, but it also said 'approximately five days, eleven hours, thirteen minutes remaining', which was… a fair amount.

Still, there was only so much you could do with a cell phone to entertain yourself. By the time Friday night had rolled around and it was time for bed, Candace One had just about exhausted all the nooks and crannies in the device that she was willing to explore… being quite sure to steer clear of the pictures stored on it, as she'd been warned by Candace Three.

She was possessed with a morbid curiosity to peek amongst them, purely because they would at the very least give her something new to look at… but no, she definitely was not going to do that. Not at all.

And that was pretty much the reason that when night finally fell, when Candace Four and her brother went - went home, Candace One was actually thankful for it. The days here really seemed to drag endlessly on. She utterly refused to interact with anything that might remind her of… Candace Four's and Three's and Six's … thing , and although she knew that was the right decision, it still drastically cut on down on the amount of things there were to do.

Nevertheless, night came. Sometimes Candace One forgot time was actually passing still, which seemed dumb, and probably was, but it was also very annoying. And generally just functioned as a reminder of exactly how long it had been since she'd actually been able to talk anybody that she knew, anybody that she loved. It had been so long now… and it really wasn't improving her mood any. For too long she'd been alone outside the time loops, and now that the loops had apparently stopped, she was alone in a strange dimension, surrounded by other versions of herself that all had insane ideas about how she should live her life, and even if they didn't - like Candace Five - they still bossed her around and demanded she do this, that, and the other, and how if she didn't, her life would fall apart - like, just because they were so old, they were such experts on the matter.

Admittedly, that had kinda… stopped, at least in regards to Candaces Three and Four. Candace One had blown up on them, which was hardly something she should have done, but at least she'd managed to get Four's brother to tell them to stop bothering her about matters that she reallydidn't want to discuss.

And since then, well, Candace One had spent most of the time since then cooped up in one of the rooms off the basement. First she'd read some stuff, some of which had been interesting, and some of which had been… not. And then, driven by curiosity mixed with boredom, she'd waited until Candace Three was alone in the basement to approach her with questions, mostly about how , exactly, it was that Three'd managed to become a miniature Phineas and Ferb, and whether or not she thought that Candace One could ever do that too.

Of course, the answer she'd gotten to that had been as useless as it had been maddening, really. And she'd said that Candace One should give up busting her brothers. Candace One? Giving up? Aside from that one time on the train, busting her brothers was something she was determined to never give up, no matter what anyone said. It wasn't even malicious at this point… she just wanted to prove to her mom for once and for all that she was not actually losing her mind. And maybe there was a little bit of ill will there… and she did want those annoying inventions to stop bothering her so much… but it just wasn't fair , okay? And it was dangerous (mostly to her… she seemed to be the only one who ever got hurt.) Though that, too, could totally change with time (not that it would, given her luck) so she was only doing everyone around her a favor, really, including her brothers themselves.

Still, despite all that, when she returned to the ninth floor of the building, looking for a spare room to sleep in, she'd been so done with all the loneliness. She'd wanted to find someone to sleep in the same room with, just purely so she wouldn't be alone. It was, of course, fully ridiculous. But it was also the reason she still clung to Mr. Miggins at home and had, over the course of the time loops, grown increasingly more rededicated to the idea of taking him to bed with her.

Of course, finding someone willing to sleep in the same room as her would probably be a difficult task. Candace Two was off at Four's house. Candaces Three and Six were actively committing incest in their home dimensions. Candaces Five and Seven wanted nothing to do with her - as the still-sore spot on her head proved. And Kevin was… well, Kevin was Kevin. Nothing against Kevin personally (aside from attacking her that one time, Kevin seemed a decent person, at least), but Candace One wanted nothing at all to do with the hallucination that had plagued her for so long.

She'd had to make a choice, really. Swallow her nerves and sleep alone, again ; swallow her revulsion and sleep in the room with one of the incestuous Candaces, or go crawling back to Five and Seven after Seven had physically picked her up off the ground and thrown her out last night. Or Kevin… yeah, Kevin was never really an option.

And so she'd decided, after much painful deliberation, to go with the Candace she'd spent the most time on good terms with. Which still wasn't a lot - she'd still spent hardly any time at all on good terms with anyone. But of all insignificant stretches time, the least insignificant of them had been spent talking with Candace Three. Plus, Candace Three had let her borrow her phone. Which had been a help to Candace One in making herself not seem quite so pathetic as she felt when asking, because she'd been able to at least partially mask it under the guise of 'I was returning your phone and oh, I'm in your room already, I might as well sleep in here'.

And she was still alone. And nothing could make her feel fully at ease with that the knowledge that the woman sleeping on the other side of the room had had sex with her own brother . But it had still helped, in some kind of stupid way.

Then, all too soon, Saturday had dawned, signalling the beginning of another long, boring day. Candace One'd hoped that today would be the day she got home, but Candace Three had only shrugged and called such hopes 'unlikely', which was kind of discouraging.

She'd gotten dressed and, upon finding herself alone, had decided to tagg after Candace Three to the basement again. Thankfully, Three'd not forgotten about her completely, and had left One the cell phone again… which she was grateful for, really, even if it didn't do as much to satisfy her as she would have thought.

For a few minutes after arriving and greeting Three in the basement, she sat idly and watched her doing whatever it was she was doing, then she ate breakfast, and then tried her best to content herself poking through the notes stored on Candace Three's phone. There was a grocery list (well, it was mostly groceries, although Candace One wasn't sure where in the grocery store one would acquire an 'ionic protoplasm centrifuge'. There was schedule of sorts, on which was marked 'September 25th: Replace batteries on city hall lion excluder'.

Wait, that was today, actually. Apparently Candace Three would be missing that appointment.

There was also a long note that she first began to read with interest before quickly closing it disgust two sentences, upon realizing that it was more or less a love letter, and not one she was particularly keen on discovering the contents of.

"It's going to rain today," Candace Four announced, suddenly opening the stairwell door and strolling into the room followed by Phineas Four.

"Oh?" That was Candace Three, who glanced up from a bowl of cereal she'd been slowly poking at while apparently being lost in thought.

"It kinda looks like it," Phineas Four said. "At least that's what it said on the radio? I didn't really bother to double-check."

"Well, it is fall now," Candace Three decided, pushing her cereal bowl away from her. "And that's generally always meant rain and then snow for the Tri-State Area. At least, you know, for mine."

"Seems fairly accurate." Candace Four shrugged and plopped herself down on a chair across the table from Candace One. "You know, this was not how I was planning to spend this weekend. Not hardly." She paused, shooting a glance in One's direction. "Hello, One."

Candace One half-waved, looking up for a half a second before redirecting her attention back to the screen of Candace Three's phone. Apparently Three had somehow managed to get a copy of Ducky Momo's Golden Quest to work on the mobile device, complete with computer-controlled avatars to take the place of other players in what was supposed to be an MMORPG in the lack of a network connection.

Candace One didn't know how that worked - but she didn't really care either. Besides, she was almost to the forest with the Grizzly King and she'd need to concentrate if she wanted to do well. She had a fair bit of grinding to do before she could challenge the King himself, but - all in good time.

"Not exactly how I was planning to spend mine either, to be fair," Three replied, stretching.

"You do know that you don't technically have to be here, Candace," Phineas Four remarked. "I mean, I like having you around, - you know that - but there's not really any concrete reason for you to stay cooped up here all day if you'd rather be elsewhere."

"Eh." Candace Four shrugged again. "Somebody's got to keep all the mes in line, you know? I know Two likes to think she's in charge, but I personally think that even though the lights are on, there's nobody home."

"Now, that's not very nice," Phineas said gently.

"Where is Two anyway?" Three wondered. "No, wait - I know. She's out standing 'guard' in front of the stairwell door, right?"

"Of course you are." Four rolled her eyes, making a face, before growing serious again. "Have you even seen her, though? I mean, she's got those sunglasses, like, glued to her face, but I swear she's way paler than she was when we met in Nullville. And you saw how she was acting while we were eating breakfast." She glanced over at Three. "I literally stand up to put my bowl away, and she suddenly flips out and yells something about being under attack and goes 'Get down!' and straight-up tackled Phineas to the ground."

"Say what ?" Three echoed. "I knew she'd lost her marbles, but I didn't suspect it was that many of them. What on earth would possess a her to do a thing like that?"

"Who knows?" Candace Four drummed her fingers on the table. "She's been acting all messed up - even more than usual, I mean. She tripped over her own feet like five separate times that I can recall. And can't even seem to stand up straight anymore. It's like she's gotten herself drunk, I swear."

"Huh," Phineas Four mumbled. "I had… not really noticed before now, but you're kinda right, aren't you? It almost seems like she's been - been microsleeping."

"What now?" Candace Four asked.

"Microsleeps," he repeated more loudly. "Symptom of, well, of sleep deprivation. I wonder how much sleep she's been getting recently."

"I have no idea," Candace Three said. "I've never seen her asleep, if it matters. But I've never really seen anyone else asleep either, I guess." She glanced over at Candace One. "You?"

Candace One shook her head mutely, saying nothing, but continued to listen to the conversation out one ear and focus on the video game in her hands with the other. She wasn't going to point out that Candace Three had no doubt seen her sleeping last night. The less of her other selves that found about that, the better, really.

"Have any of you seen her even intending to go to bed, though?" Phineas Four continued. "Thursday morning when you guys first got here, trying to get her to lie down was a herculean task - and then she suddenly acquiesced and laid down so fast that it seemed rather strange to me even at the time. Now that I think of it, though, I wonder whether or not she actually slept that night at all." He pursed his brow, looking concerned. "This… might explain why she's having such trouble adjusting to staying here."

"Well, I don't know about that ," Three responded. "She was just as paranoid as ever on the first time we met in the non-dimension. Nothing much has changed in that regard."

"Still," he repeated. "If it is going on, it's not healthy. She'll hurt herself - or someone else around her, because her brain is literally going to involuntarily shut itself down over a lack of energy, and all the willpower in the world cannot keep you awake indefinitely."

"If you can get her to actually talk to you - and say more than one-word answers, then you'll have done better than probably anyone else," Candace Four said. "She's got two modes: 'yes' and 'no', along with 'rattling off long lists of commands' because, you know, she's obviously in charge of us."

"And she won't let you forget it, either," Candace Three chimed in. "I swear, not a minute goes by in her company when she doesn't 'remind' you of that 'fact'." She snorted. "Whatever her dimension's like, I still fail to see how she can be that paranoid."

"Agreed." Candace Four nodded. "She was still nutso when we first met at fifteen, but at least back then she was reasonable . I guess she's just hardened with age or something. Whatever the opposite of 'mellowed' is, because she definitely did not mellow."

"I'm serious, though," Phineas Four said again. "This isn't something we should ignore - something's obviously not quite right." He paused for a moment. "I'll ask her what's going on, I suppose. I do… have another issue I'd like to take care of before we get back to work today."

"Right." Candace Four shook her head, smiling faintly at her brother. "Because Two's definitely gonna just open right up to you. I love you, but I swear, sometimes you still surprise me with this sort of stuff."

Candace One redoubled her focus on the video game at that , desperately trying to prevent her brain from parsing the meaning of those words. Focus on the game. The game. The game. You know, she should probably just leave again… but spending so much time cooped up alone in a room really got to you. As long as Candace Four and her brother didn't… escalate the situation any, she would - would pretend they were talking about normal sibling love and nothing else. Because what else would they be talking about.

Candace One certainly didn't know. Nope. No idea. None at all. Not a clue.

"Well, you miss a hundred percent of shots you don't take," Phineas Four returned, smiling back. Candace One could feel his eyes boring into her from across the room, and she stubbornly kept her own gaze fixed firmly on the phone's screen. "Anyhow, I'm off for a bit. I've got some business to take care. Guess I'll leave you all to it."

He waved and then walked back over to the stairwell door, disappearing beyond it.

"And I guess I'll get to it too, then," Candace Three remarked. She exhaled loudly through her nose. "After all this quantum physics and spatiotemporal math from the last three days, I'm really starting to itch to get my hands on a blowtorch or a riveter or a something . Man, I wanna cross the tundra right now. Or build a rollercoaster - or ski down a mountain of beans or devise a system for remembering everything. Heck, I'd take synchronizing submarines." She shook her head. "Whatever. Back to work."

"Good luck," Four said.

"Thanks." Candace Three walked across the basement as well - in the opposite direction as Phineas Four had, towards the laboratory area again.

For a few minutes, all was fairly silent in the basement room. Whatever noise Three may have been making over there was too far away to be heard, and the soft noises of the video game could hardly be counted as interruptions anyway.

Candace One could feel Four looking at her, and she raised her eyes slightly from the screen and was quickly confirmed in her hunch.

Four shifted slightly in her seat. "Neat-looking phone. Wish I had one like that when I was your age."

"It's not mine," Candace One automatically replied, for a reason that she wasn't quite sure of. Was she really so desperate for conversation that she would take the first opportunity when it presented itself? "It's Three's."

"Ah." Candace Four didn't seem particularly surprised. "It looks rather similar to mine. I suppose her brother built it." She shrugged. "Or maybe she did? Who knows."

"I… would not," Candace One answered slowly.

"So, what're you doing?"

"Nothing." Now this answer was instinctive, and this times she was exactly sure of why, too. She was way older than the intended audience of Ducky Momo , after all, and hiding her… passion for the television show had been something she'd practiced so often that it came to her without thinking by now.

Of course, on second thought, it probably wasn't quite necessary to hide her interests around her other selves, was it? Unlike what might happen with Jeremy back home, they weren't going to reject her over that childishness, especially not when Three and Four and Six were like living epitomes of childishness.

(Which was, incidentally, how Candace had decided to think about this thing… that they'd simply never grown mature enough to realize what was wrong about their actions. It made it… somewhat less painful to think about? Too bad she couldn't just live out her days in immaturity like that. No, Jeremy was so mature - and he wouldn't want a girlfriend who wasn't , either. So she had to do what she had to do. Really, if only Three and Four had stuck around Jeremy for long enough for his awesomeness to rub off on them - then it would have probably turned out for the better, no? Candace One found it hard to believe that they could settle for their brothers after being with Jeremy . So they obviously hadn't gotten as close to him as Candace One had? It seemed to make sense.)

Heck, based on what Candace Four's… Candace Four's … on what Xavier (no, that was even worse) had said a few nights ago, it was possible that Candace Four herself was still interested in it. Which was… something.

In any case, the game had been on Candace Three's phone in the first place. Huh. Well, whatever. It wasn't that important in the end.

Candace Four scooted her chair around until she was looking over Candace One's shoulder. One resisted the impulse to hide the screen, hoping to high heaven that her assumptions about the other Candaces had been correct. If they hadn't, well, she'd probably end up getting laughed out of the room. Thankfully, however, Candace Four's reaction did not disappoint.

"Oh, hey, Golden Quest . I used to play that with Stacy when I was a - was younger."

"Huh. I am… not surprised, really." Then again, the entire hinging point for all the things that had happened yesterday was kinda the fact that Candace Three and Four and Five's 'younger' lives had been so similar to Candace One's own. So she really wasn't surprised.

"Yeah, I guess you wouldn't be." Candace Four leaned back and put her feet up on the tabletop. "Neat that it's on a phone though, I guess, I don't know."

"I guess," Candace One replied. "Though half the fun of the game is supposed to be playing with friends anyway. It's just the computer playing with me now."

"Fair enough." Four shrugged. "What else's on there, anyway?"

"I don't know." Candace One paused. "Well, that's not exactly true, but it's not really all interesting - like the phone book. There's some actual books too, but I haven't read them all." Which was, to be fair, because some of them may as well have been written in another language, and the ones that Candace One could interpret were still often dull and dry. Seriously, who wanted to read something that was nothing but thousands of pages of science textbook? Well, 'thousands' was probably an exaggeration, but Candace One had already determined that while she was in another dimension, she would pass on the schooling. Summer vacation had ended, of course, and so she was going to get her absolute fill of that when she did finally get home. (Honestly, after everything that had happened, was it hard to believe that Candace One was looking forwards to being back at home, and by extension, school? No, no it was not.)

"Huh. Well, at least you got something to do now," Four replied, leaning farther back in her chair. "I guess that's always a good thing."

"Sure…" One said uncertainly. "It is better than nothing, but I still wish there was something else to do. I just - I really wish I could bus-" she hesitated. "Bus- bu- buy something? From, you know, the mall, or wherever." She really was pathetic, wasn't she? She'd not have admitted it to her other selves for the world, but without her brothers around to spend her time busting, she really was a bit lost at sea. She'd never needed to bother starting a hobby or finding anything to do with them around. Busting was a habit - albeit one that often left her unfulfilled and exhausted and despondent - but it was not one she could break at any rate. Nor would she have wanted to, either. One day, she'd prove that she wasn't crazy. One day… one day… one day eventually.

And, of course, the only reason she spent so much of her time busting was for that reason alone : that they needed to get in trouble for all the things they got away with, and to prove that Candace One wasn't a lunatic, and to inspire Jeremy to marry her, which would certainly happen so soon as she managed to bust them, she was pretty sure. There no 'other' reasons, no deeper, hidden meanings. They needed to be busted, and she was the buster. Plain and simple.

Nothing else.

Candace Four raised one eyebrow. "Why do I get the feeling that that was not what you were going to say at first?"

"I don't know what you're saying," Candace One replied stubbornly. She would show them - she didn't need her brothers to entertain herself. She could… talk to Jere - no, wait, she couldn't do that either. Well, crud. This whole being in another dimension thing was getting really annoyingly limiting.

"I'm not saying anything." Four yawned loudly. "Just sitting here watching you play your game because it's Saturday and apparently I have nothing better to do. At least the kids were… slightly happier to stay behind this time, though there's no telling how long that'll last."

Candace One flinched slightly, but said nothing, telling herself repeatedly that Candace Four hadn't meant anything by it. She really would have preferred to get out of the company of the two incestuous Candaces once and for all… but when the only other real option was being alone again , she still found herself loath to stand up and leave. Why did everything have to be so hard? Would it have killed the universe to provide her with at least one other Candace who wasn't insane or incestuous or just flat-out alien?

And, of course, the second she thought that, she realized that it kind of had … Candace Five.

Who Candace One had promptly alienated and been kicked away from, killing any chance of being able to relate, which was… pleasant. Of course, she could go back to Candace Five and try to reconcile, as she had with Three and Four, but that would also probably involve running into Candace Seven - since those two did stick together like glue - and that was not something she wanted.

Candace Two may have been freakishly paranoid and rude and a little too free with that stick of hers, and Candace Five was definitely too bossy for her own good, but Candace Seven was probably the only Candace that One was not-so-subconsciously seeking to avoid. The woman spewed profanities and insults at Phineas and Ferb every single time she was given the opportunity and Candace One really didn't like to hear that kind of stuff. It disturbed her - it made her feel as if she should be jumping to defend her brothers against the onslaught.

And, of course, had Candace Seven been just about anyone else, she would have. She'd done it before, and she would do it again. But Candace Seven… well, there was something different about the situation with her. Perhaps it had something to do with the way Seven said what she said. With a sort of raw disdain and malevolence that almost… frightened Candace One. If a version of her could be so vindictively hateful, well, did that mean that it was possible for her to feel so as well? She didn't like to think so, and yet, there was no doubt that Candace Seven was dead serious about what she said. A person couldn't say those things in that way and not be fully committed to it.

But about her own brothers ? Candace One just couldn't comprehend it, and she wasn't exactly sure that she wanted too, either.

One thing that was for sure, though, was that Candace One would have pretty much preferred Two 's company over Seven's by now - and that was saying something as someone had already spent time alone with Candace Two and had found her as exactly as insufferable as one might imagine.

At least spending time with Candace Two didn't make you question what you knew about yourself. It was… distinctly unsettling to have to wonder if you were capable of saying the things that Candace Seven had said. And even worse to wonder if you were capable of feeling the feelingsevidently behind the words.

Either way, being able to stay away from Candace Seven - as far away as was possible, ideally - was plenty good enough a reason for Candace One to feel quite okay about steering clear of the little clique that Five and Seven had created amongst themselves. And it was also the reason that she (admittedly grudgingly) still resigned herself to lingering in the basement with Three and Four even in spite of what sort of disturbing things Three and Four got up to.

A few minutes slipped by in relative silence. Four sat next to her, but mostly just stared off into space. Candace One grew bored of the video game (it really wasn't half so fun as when she usually played with Stacy) and took to mindlessly poking here and there into the little nooks and crannies of the phone's storage, hunting for something fresh to take her mind off of things. Her fingers hesitated briefly over the photo folders, and she once again toyed with the idea of taking just a peek inside, before rejecting it soundly. No, she'd seen enough of that at Candace Four's house - enough to last her a lifetime. There was no need to see any more of it.

"I do have one question for you, though," Candace Four suddenly remarked from beside her.

For a second, Candace One didn't respond as she tried to figure out what Four wanted to ask her. It - it wouldn't have to do with Phineas, right? Four'd said she was going to stop talking about that yesterday. To her credit, she so far had, but that didn't stop the nervousness building up inside the pit of One's stomach. She swallowed hard. "Oh?"

"Yeah…" Four drawled slowly. "Don't worry, it's nothing like that. It's not really important, just something I was a bit curious about is all. I mean, it's really kinda stupid." She paused. "But whatever. Have you noticed how weird Three holds spoons?" Four reached up and twisted her hand around in the air. "It's like she doesn't know how to work them. I mean, that's weird , right?"

Candace One shrugged. "I dunno. I guess you're right, though."

"I know, right?" Four gestured up to the ceiling of the basement listlessly. "I mean… she can use them right, and she does, but every time I see her sit down, it's like she has a brain fart and forgets for a second until she figures it out again."

Talking about spoons so much caused something to occur to One suddenly. "You know, spoons sort of… ceased to exist in my dimension." Or something along those lines, at least, right? She wasn't sure how the whole thing with space-time worked, but it seemed reasonable, right?

Four knit her eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"I… I'm not sure," One said. She sat the phone down on the table and looked up at the roof. "Just that the morning before I fell into the rift that made me find all of you, Dad was eating cereal without a spoon, and he didn't remember what a spoon was. And I couldn't find any in our house - or anywhere on the Internet either. And it wasn't just spoons either - but tigers too, and Mom's capris."

"Huh." Candace Four looked thoughtful. "I guess they got sucked up by time rifts, then. I… sort of remember the same thing happening here a long time ago. I… don't know, it seems to have played out a lot differently for everyone. Three told me she had to spend like a week or something in there when she was a kid, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't even in there for an hour. And you… well, you met us ."

"Great," Candace One replied. "I guess this is the point where my dimension starts differing from yours then."

"Possibly?" Four shrugged. "But you were born in 2023, and I was already twenty-eight at that point. So weren't our dimensions always kindadifferent?"

"I guess." Candace One sighed. "I have no idea about this stuff or how any of it works. You'd have to ask Phineas and Ferb, I guess."

"I mean, I do, most of the time," Four said. "Unless I decide that it's not really that important to me how something works. Which also happens a fair amount." She rolled her eyes. "Sometimes it's easier to just go with the flow and let it work without knowing how it works, I find."

"You have no idea," One said, rolling her eyes. "I mean… I guess you do, actually. Well, you know what I'm talking about then. I swear it's like they don't know how to do normal, average, mediocre kid stuff. You should've seen what happened on the day I told them to start a lemonade stand."

"Lemonade stand?" Four echoed. "Lemonade stand… lemonade stand. I… I am pretty sure I remember something about a lemonade stand? But it was a long time ago."

"Wasn't a long time for me," One snorted. "Well… it kinda was, actually. But that's only because I lived the last freaking day of summer for like a month and a half. That was not fun. Aside from at first, I guess. But I was over it seven days in. And it just kept going...on and on and on and on ."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure you mentioned that to me at one point," Four replied. "Or maybe it was someone else? I don't know - it seems like the whole time-loopy thing is a recurring thing with all of us."

"It's miserable ," One agreed. "Wait - 'us'? It happened to you too?"

Four nodded. "Yeah. It was ages ago, but it did happen. I remember it being pretty sucky too - I mean, time itself refusing to flow normally is… not something you forget easily. Even after a long where it has been flowing normally."

Candace One didn't immediately reply to that . When she did, her voice was somewhat softer than it had been before. "Yeah, it… seems like that would be true." She hesitated briefly, wondering if she she should bother broaching this subject with Four. She'd talked to Candace Three about it for a… little bit, but that was different. Different because Three was different. Because she could do what Phineas and Ferb could - different because unlike Candace One, she hadn't been… so utterly helpless. But Four, though - Four was like her . And in a similar vein, she'd told PhineasFour as well. But that… was similarly just not as satisfying. She wasn't sure why she'd expected anything different, really. Probably because she usually went to her own brother with things like this.

At least Candace Four was a Candace - she somehow felt like that was an important distinction.

Maybe that was a weird distinction to make? She didn't really know. But Four was sure as heck easier to talk to than Candace Five or Seven had ever been, which was… a bit unsettling, now that Candace thought of it.

...yikes, what did that mean? Candace One was... not ready to face that fact.

"You know, it was kinda… freaky," she said softly. "I mean… for a month and a half I kept waking up on the last day of summer. I - I didn't know if I'd ever find a way to make it stop, really. And I didn't think about it much, because during the days I was focusing on trying to bust the boys but at night… I would wonder if maybe it wasn't ever going to stop. And even though I was technically with my family every day, it - it didn't count, if you know what I mean."

Candace Four shifted in her seat and looked sideways at Candace One. "I guess. I mean, like I said, it was a long time ago - when I think back about it, I don't remember much about it beyond the looping itself, but I remember it not being very fun at the end. Especially not when Phineas and Ferb got sucked up - I had to chase down Buford and Baljeet and Isabella to help me get them back."

Candace One blinked. "That - that's kinda the same story that Candace Three told me, actually." She rolled her eyes. "So it would have been better if I'd just let the rift take them, apparently. Great. Guess they're right when they say 'no good deed goes unpunished' after all."

"Oh?"

"I mean - it happened to you and you managed to save them just fine. It happened to Three and she managed to do it too - and not only that, but she also somehow managed to start building things like Phineas and Ferb? It's not that I would want them to be in danger, but… I mean, they're Phineas and Ferb. They could totally handle this better than I can - than I am . " Then again, maybe that wasn't entirely true… Candace One wouldn't have wanted her brother to hear or see all of the horribly disturbing things she'd seen and heard since arriving here. Not that she thought he would get any ideas or anything - he wouldn't, of course, right? She… hoped not knew not. Of course he wouldn't - that - that was crazy. Insane. Completely.

"I suppose," Candace Four said noncommittally. "Though I still get the feeling that if the same thing happened to you now, you would probably do the same thing now, no?"

"I… I don't know." One sighed and rolled her eyes. "Probably, I guess... I wasn't really thinking straight, you know? I was just in the middle of freaking out because spoons didn't exist anymore and then I saw a rift behind them and I - I just jumped at them without paying attention."

"Well, I mean, I threw a life preserver into a natural time rift and got surprised when it sucked me in," Four replied. "And Three's told me she alsoset off on some quest or something to get her brothers back." She smiled slightly. "Apparently it's like a thing for us Candaces."

"At least the ones who aren't from outer space," One said, shaking her head. "Or Kevin. I… don't really know what's going on with her."

"Honestly?" Four asked. "Neither do I. I… am sort of weirdly nervous that that stupid zebra is going to show up again because of her being here, and I do not like that idea."

"Oh, heck no - I hope not." Candace One cringed in her chair. "That would - just, no, please. I've had my absolute fill of him over the last summer. I'm just glad that he wasn't there in any of the time loops. That would have just been too much."

"I'm just glad he hasn't shown up here yet," Four replied. "And it's been a few days so maybe he won't? But I don't wanna get too hopeful."

The door to the stairwell suddenly squeaked and swung open, and Four's brother walked in, an oddly somber look on his face. Candace Two was behind him, of course, as she always was. She stumbled over something and caught herself on the door jamb, leaning into it and breathing heavily as if she was entirely winded. "I… will be shhtand - tanding ou - out - outside." She pushed herself away from the wall and stepped back outside, letting the door swing shut behind her.

Candace One had never really paid much attention to it before this morning, but now that it had been brought up, it wasn't terribly difficult to see that something was not entirely right with Two.

"Hey," Candace Four said, giving her brother a small wave. She frowned slightly at his serious look - a look that even Candace One knew was alien on her brother's face. He was rarely angry, and even more rarely serious. "Something… bothering you?"

Phineas Four looked up almost as if he was surprised. "Oh, uh - uh, no. No, of course not." He reached up and scratched behind his ear.

Candace Four frowned. "Really? Are you - are you sure ?" Her voice lilted with suspicion as it came out, and Candace One glanced between the two of them curiously.

"No - no, nothing's wrong. I'm - I haven't figured out yet how to get Two to relax?" He nodded his head. "Yes… that… that is - is a problem too. Is a problem. The problem."

"Mmm hmm." Candace Four didn't sound entirely convinced, but she didn't seem inclined to pursue the subject more - at least not here. Maybe she would later? It was possibility, Candace One supposed.

"Yeaaaah…" Phineas Four drawled. He shifted back forth between his two feet and suddenly took a deep breath. "So… what're you two talking about?"

Candace Four's eyes narrowed slightly, but she exhaled slightly and answered anyway. "Not much. Just like, you know, time loops and all."

"Time loops?" he raised his eyebrows slightly. "Sounds interesting. But… why time loops, exactly?"

Candace One rolled her eyes. "Didn't I tell you this already? I feel like I did." She paused for a moment to watch his face. "Whatever - the reason is because for the last, like, two months or something, I've been living in one. And it was a nightmare ."

"Oh, yeah," he said slowly. "I do think you said that at some point, yeah. I guess I just must not have picked up it at the time. It's my bad, probably." He furrowed his brow. "Still, time loops, you say? You wouldn't have happened to notice what kind of time loop, would you?"

"What - what kind ?" One echoed in puzzlement. "I - how on earth would I know what kind ? I - I mean, I didn't even know there were kinds? What kinds are you talking about?"

"There's a few kinds," he explained. "Natural and unnatural, con structive and de structive. Natural loops - well, they've never been observed to form, actually - they have the name in the way that 'darkness' is the name for an absence of light. If a time loop was to form on its own, it would be a natural one. But… that can't happen because of - because of the way spacetime works, really. There's gotta be a 'hook' of some sort for the fabric of reality to get caught on, and that's what are called 'unnatural'." He shrugged. "Either way, that's not terribly important. The important part is: was it a con structive or a de structive loop?"

Candace One frowned. "I have no idea. How on earth would I even tell?"

"Constructive time loops resolve themselves," he replied. "They usually reset once or twice, before whatever the 'snag' in reality was, and then time moves on with the natural flow. Destructive time loops occur when the snag is too powerful to be so… naturally removed via spacetime's natural self-healing. When in a destructive time loop, reality is stretched so thin that it starts to tear apart, opening holes into…" his voice trailed away. "Holes into a space beyond reality - a place beyond time, a place beyond space, outside of everything, indelibly stamped with a shadow of what lies in reality but forever outside it, a place that defies comprehension to the point that physics begins to break down and existence itself loses track of whatever travels into the beyond."

"So like, Nullville, right?" Candace Four chimed in. "Outside everything - space, time, reality, comprehension, et cetera, et cetera?"

"Yes, Nullville, exactly," he returned. "That' what Nullville is - or isn't , I suppose - and suddenly I'm wondering if I've just made a breakthrough."

"A 'breakthrough'?" Candace One asked, sitting farther upright in her chair. "That - that sounds good. It's good, right?"

"It is ," he said. "Ferb and I have been running into so many problems trying to figure out how to get our dimension traveler to be able to make so many trips without disturbing spacetime too much - and it's been such an issue because everything's been so messed up as far as space-time continuums go. And the gravitons - the natural current of energy between dimensions - have been so agitated that it's been like trying to find a way to steer a sailboat through a thunderstorm. But… if that was all caused by a destructive time loop , well, that makes perfect sense now. I mean, you should see the readings. They're unlike anything I've seen before - and yet, make perfect sense with readings you would expect from reality fabric recovering from an event like that."

"Wait - does this - does this mean we're going home, like, today?" Candace One asked, feeling herself grow excited.

"No," Phineas Four replied, instantly dashing her growing hopes. "At least, probably not? But don't you see? Candace Three has been having to keep track of and calculate the dimensions of the scars in spacetime by hand - because we couldn't figure out the pattern to it. Because there wasn't a pattern - it's debris from a time loop , and knowing that, it should actually be possible to construct an algorithm capable of detecting these things… and track it automatically. It's - it's not the sort of thing I've dealt with since this one time years and years ago, but it makes sense . We knew the continuum was unstable, and we knew we had to be gentle to not destabilize it anymore, but we couldn't predict when or where spurts of extra agitation would flare up, as opposed to periods of calm. We were looking for a pattern - when the pattern is actually the lack of one . Because time loop debris . You - you wouldn't happen to know the exact spatio-temporal specifications of the time loop, would you? How long each cycle was? What the wavelength of the flux was? What the-"

"Phineas." Candace Four spoke up.

"-oh, yeah, my bad. Sorry."

"A day?" Candace One offered, still trying to be helpful. "The length of the loops, I mean. I stayed up all night during one. The clock would hit midnight of the 22nd and then switch to the first minute - of the 22nd. Everything would sort of… 'reset' back to how it was originally - even me. Except I remembered the loops, something that… no one else could."

"A day?" Phineas Four pondered. "That's… rather inaccurate a time stamp. But I guess it gives us a baseline. Hang on, I'll be right back." He turned quickly and darted off towards the laboratory area of the basement, saying something to Candace Three that apparently sparked quite the animated conversation.

"He won't be right back," Candace Four said with a small smile on her face. "He says that, but did you see the look on his face? We've lost him for at least the next hour or two."

"As long as we get to go home ," Candace One repeated. "I don't care at all."

"No, I… don't suppose you do." Candace Four shrugged and stood up. "Well, I'm gonna run to the restroom, if he asks after me - though I don't suspect he will."

Candace One nodded slightly as the woman walked off. Well, this was a good thing, right? She'd helped… somehow? Apparently? Honestly, by now she sincerely didn't care if she helped or not - she just wanted home . And nothing else.

She picked up Candace Three's phone from the table and stuffed it into her pocket, and then followed Four's example and stood up. She'd spent entirely too long down here in the company of all these… incestuous women. It wasn't exactly a healthy thing, she was sure. Although, rather strangely, she'd actually… well, she'd managed. She'd gotten along with them, at least to a decent extent.

Nothing major had happened - nor could it ever happen, considering what these Candaces' views on acceptable romance was - but there had been no yelling or anything of that sort, really, just… conversation. Conversation that she even might be half-inclined to call… half-pleasant.

Now there was a thought that unsettled her. How come she could manage to get along like this with Three and Four and not with, say, Five? Or at least Kevin - someone who wasn't married to her own brother? She should have felt weirded out the whole time, shouldn't she?

Okay, and to be fair, she had . More or less. But it hadn't been that overwhelming feeling of repulsion that had consumed her originally, and Candace One did not like that. She was suddenly reminded of just what sort of thing might be in store for her if she allowed it to happen. And it was something that she could never allow to happen - more so than it may already have , which was frightening enough in and of itself.

If she found herself feeling so… inclined to rather pass time with the incestuous versions of herself, well, what did that say about her ? Not - not anything good, that was for absolute sure. She had to go - to set things straight, to restore the balance, as it were.

She really ought to go find someone else to talk to. Not Seven, for obvious reasons. Not Two, for… similarly obvious reasons. And she obviously couldn't talk to herself - she was already feeling crazy and didn't need to encourage that mindset. Really, then, that only left… Kevin and - and Five. Kevin, the one Candace whose name wasn't even 'Candace', who came from a universe so different that she couldn't perceive the idea of eating meat and expected all animals to be able to talk, Kevin, the one who, in all probability, was the one the talking zebra had been referring to all this time? Okay, yeah, no, that was never going to happen.

So… Five, then?

Candace One squirmed in place uncomfortably. Well, she did technically owe Candace Five an apology. There was just that issue of Candace Seven hanging around, but… well, she was really getting desperate here. Desperate to get away from Three and Four before she got rubbed off on anymore, and desperate to find someone to talk to, something to entertain herself - all without brothers to spend time busting. The only real option for all that was Candace Five, if she was being honest with herself.

Still, Seven, right?

She heard a toilet flush from the room that Candace Four had disappeared into, and promptly made up her mind. She would be gone by the time the woman returned, she decided, darting to the stairwell door and pulling it open.

She stepped out into the stairwell and let the door swing shut behind, stopping to brief a short sigh of relief before glancing up. "Oh. Well, uh - I mean… I mean 'Hi' - Hi, Two."

Candace Two was standing there, perfectly still, as she often did, head cocked to the side, staring off into the wall on the opposite side of the stairwell. At least, One assumed she was? You couldn't actually tell with those stupid sunglasses of hers that she always wore… but her head didn't move, nor did she make the slightest sound to acknowledge One stepping out into the stairwell. She just… sort of stood there, perfectly still, her mouth hanging open slightly.

Candace One rolled her eyes slightly. "Whatever," she mumbled under her breath.

"Say what?!" Candace Two abruptly exclaimed, lurching upright all of the sudden. "I - no - he - oh." She stopped and took a long, shaky breath. "You - you're - you may pass. I..." Her voice trailed away and her head began slowly nodding to one side, getting farther and farther down before it suddenly snapped back. "You can - can - can - go. Can go." She lifted up her stick and brought the end down sharply on the top of her own foot. "Get out of here!"

"I'm going, I'm going," One replied. "Geez. No need to get so touchy about it." She rolled her eyes again and started up the stairs, leaving the basement and whatever-the-heck was wrong with Candace Two behind.

You know, this ten-story climb every time she wanted to get between the basement and the ninth floor was getting kind of annoying. Somebody needed to fix the elevator - and fast . You would think that with Phineas Four and Ferb Four (or even Candace Three) here so much, that somebody would've gotten around to it at some point. That would be nice… she really ought to bring it up to one of them at some point. Like, really, by this point Candace One was sure she'd spent half her time here in Four's dimension climbing stairs. Boredom was sucky, but endless stair-climbing was not the way she wanted to fix that.

Nevertheless, she at last made it to the top in one way or another, even despite how tired her legs got. It was a good thing she'd been practicing running all over town this summer… she didn't know how she'd be able to handle this otherwise.

From there, it was just the task of finding Candace Five, and hopefully doing so without running into Candace Seven.

"Anyone up here?" she asked aloud, poking her head into the door of the first room on the right.

"I'm right here," came a voice from behind her - from across the hallway. "What's going on?"

Candace One turned and crossed the hall, stepping into the room from which the voice had come. It was a good thing that most everyone had taken to wearing the nametags that Four's brother had handed out - it allowed One to know, for example, that this was Kevin, without having to ask for a name every time. Some of the Candaces were easy to tell apart at a glance. Candace Two, for example, and Candace Seven if you happened to be looking at her when she did the flickery thing. But Three, Four, Five, Six (now that she'd taken to wearing normal clothes) and Kevin? Good luck with that.

Kevin had a thick book of some kind in her lap, and was sitting criss-cross on the mattress with her back against the wall. "Need something?"

"No," One replied. "I'm just - I'm looking for Candace Five. You know where she is?"

Kevin frowned slightly. "I… haven't seen her this morning, no, though I'd guess she's probably still in her room, unless she left when I went to use the bathroom? I don't know for absolute sure… I've not really been paying that close attention."

"What're you even reading?" One asked, hoping that maybe it would be something she would find interesting too… unlike a good percentage of the books she'd tried to read here. Man, right now she would have killed for her brothers' 28-volume science fiction, swashbuckling, historical romance, tell-all, potboiler, mystery, satire, buddy-cop adventure, tragedy, how-to, action novel. She didn't even know what it was about , and she was already regretting having turned it down that one day. (To be fair, she'd hardly been in the mood to read then, though.)

Kevin lifted up the book, allowing Candace One to read the title - Comprehensive Guide to the History of Danvillian Politics and Legal Matters . Well, okay, then. There was another book she was never going to read.

"It's sort of interesting," Kevin said. "It's like reading an alternate history book of my own city - since I wasn't here to run this one." She tapped the pages. "And it even says here that a warthog was once elected mayor - no name, just 'a warthog' - and then he was removed from office for engaging in nepotism? Which is strange, considering what Four said about this. I'm gonna ask her about it."

"You do that," Candace One replied, finger-gunning the woman while backing out the room. "Meanwhile, I'm out. Peace."

She stepped out of the room and set off down the hallway, peeking inside each door as she came to it, and sure enough, it wasn't long until she looked in one and saw Candace Five sitting inside at the desk, leaning way back in the chair with her feet propped up on the desk.

"Heeeey," she greeted awkwardly, half-waving.

Candace Five gave a small start, jerking herself into a more upright position. "Oh." There was a clearly discernible pause before she continued. "Hi."

"Hi," Candace One repeated, not quite sure what else to say. She shifted back on forth on her feet uncomfortably. "Sooo… what are you… up to?"

Candace Five frowned. "Not much."

"Me neither - it's just, like, once you get past all the - all the stuff , it's so boring here." Candace One hesitated, not sure why she was feeling so nervous, and not liking it at all either. She had to do something to set the matter straight - what did it say about her that she was dithering so badly in front of the Candace who was probably the most normal of the bunch, when she'd just been downstairs talking to Three and Four, who were… anything but normal. Whatever it said about her, it wasn't good - and it had to stop. Right now, or she was going to flip out.

Well, she was probably going to end up flipping out anyway - it was kind of what she did, honestly. But not over this. She could not allow it.

Which was why she took a deep breath and launched right into speech. "Look, Five, yesterday night, I… I shouldn't have said those things, okay? Yelling at you, I mean, I - I - I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lose my temper but… you know." She smiled weakly, internally kicking herself for being so stupid. What had she been thinking - actively damaging... whatever had been between herself and Five. She wouldn't really have called it a 'friendship' per se (nor would she have called either Three or Four her friends either, just for the record. There was no way that was happening… you couldn't be friends with someone like those two, no matter how pleasant they might be. You just - you just couldn't , alright?)

Candace Five looked sort of thoughtful, at least. She rocked back and forth in her chair and seemed to be mulling something over, at least by the way her eyes drifted up towards the ceiling and her fingers drummed listlessly on the desk. At last, however, she spoke. "I… yeah." She stopped for another long moment and sighed. "It… has been brought to my attention that I may have been partially… responsible for that as well. I - I shouldn't have been trying to tell you how to live your life."

"Yeah, I guess not - I mean, like, I'm sure you didn't really mean anything - I'm sure you meant well, even. But… I can - can handle it. My life, I mean." She cringed at herself and her own faltering speech. "I mean, it's not, like, perfect , but… I'm managing. With Jeremy, with my brother, with… all that stuff." Okay, so that wasn't entirely true… but there was no way she was going to tell the most normal of Candaces how much she was internally freaking out about all of this - about how she had no idea what she was going to do when she got home.

There was no reason to be worried, she scolded herself often, but she still was. Because - because there was always a chance , wasn't there? And - and what would she do - what was she supposed to do in a situation like this one? How was she supposed to react to learning that there was a chance (even if a tiny one) that her brother was actually - actually had a -

Even the thought was still too horrible to comprehend. Trying to process it - to gather up some plan of action - felt like trying to jam a jar of peanut butter into a printing press. Everything got stuck together and mucked up and nothing came out right in the end.

"I know, I know," Candace Five replied. "I… remember being that age too, you know. It - it was my bad, really. I - I'm sure I came off bossy and that really wasn't what I intended. I'm sorry too."

"No - I mean… kinda?" One smiled sheepishly. "But I shouldn't have said… what I said still. I'm sorry about that. I mean, I'm sure you do know some things I don't, but - well, this never happened to you when you were my age, did it?" Five shook her head. "So I guess from this point on it's rather like… this is the point where our histories part ways."

"I guess so," Five replied softly. "I was just… I don't know. Do you know what it's like to think you're finally doing well in life - and you're happy, too - only to all of the sudden be forced into this crazy ride that, before you're let off, ends up completely destroying that security and happiness you thought you had - ends up making you feel irrationally terrified of being alone with your own brother ?"

"What?" Candace One chuckled nervously, her voice skipping a pitch or two. "I - I have no idea what that's like." She swallowed. "And I don't suppose I'll find out. Totally - totally not , I mean."

Five sighed. "And then this whole mess happened when I thought it was all over, and I had thought that surely, you know, out eight versions of us, I would be in the majority, I mean, come on . But no - we're on equal footing . And I don't even know Seven even counts, because she doesn't exist, but I'm terrified to not count her, because I don't want to be in the minority."

"I know," One said. "It… I couldn't believe it either. I mean… what kind of person does that?"

"Pah," Five snorted. "We do. Apparently."

Candace One shuddered. "I… no. Maybe Three and Four, but not me. Never, ever. I - I couldn't take it."

"Well." Candace Five shrugged and smiled a small smile. "That's a good thing." She leaned back in her chair again. "Trust me, One - all that stuff you dreamed about - all those plans you made? It's all worth it, heck, it's all so much better than you imagine. I - I don't know what anyone's told you, but it is actually the best thing in the world."

Nodding vigorously, One sat down on the mattress on the floor, leaning back against the wall. "I do believe you. And you can trust me - nothing anybody here ever says is going to change my mind on that . Phineas is… my brother . I - I just can't."

"You know, I shouldn't have to be thankful for that," Candace Five remarked. "But I guess I do. Who knows. I guess when it comes to me - you - us… when it comes to 'Candace Flynn' in general, being normal is… actually abnormal ? I don't know. Maybe we're the crazy ones."

"Well, I don't care." Candace One crossed her arms stubbornly. "I don't care how crazy they think I am - or how crazy it makes me. No force on this earth is going to make me change my mind about this."

"You have no idea how glad I am to hear that," Five replied, smiling. "Maybe not all is lost for Candace Flynn as a whole quite yet." She shrugged. "Heck, there's gotta be more than seven dimensions out there, right? Maybe we just got unlucky, then. Maybe there's thousands of us-es out there somewhere who did the right thing. I guess… we'll never know, will we?"

"I've about my fill of this 'other dimension' thing," One said. "If I never had to travel to another one again, I'd be quite happy with that. It's just too much trouble."

"You have no idea how much I agree with you," Five replied. "I figured I was done last time, too. And it turns out that I wasn't. I guess - I guess we just can't quite get away from it that easy. I don't even know if we'll ever get completely away."

"Aw, geez, I hope that's not true," One muttered. "I try so hard to be mature, but you just can't with Phineas and Ferb constantly making a fool out of you. It sucks ."

"Tell me something I don't know," Five said. "It gets better with time, though, really - my brothers hadn't really built any of those contraptions for years before Four showed up and kinda pushed Phineas back in that direction. But she won't do that to you , I hope. Your brothers'll grow up, eventually. They'll follow your example soon enough, and those little contraptions, well, they won't always be there, so long as you don't encourage them in that direction, I guess." She faintly smiled. "I always loved them, but it sure became easier to not get so irritated after they finally grew up. And they did - they're not stupid. Childish, perhaps, but it's nothing that won't wane with time."

" Encourage them?" One snorted. "Right. It's all I can do to beg them to just be normal every once in awhile." Of course, then, on the days when they did do nothing, she grew extremely bored and listless and irritable and generally miserable without anything to do… but that was not really important. Well, it was - but only so far as making her more determined to bust them one day . No one could escape forever. The Mysterious Force was powerful, but it couldn't be infinitely so, right?

A sudden morbid thought flitted through her head. Candace Six had said that the Force wanted to push her into making romance with her brother - and even suggested that that was the reason it kept thwarting her. So… did that mean, by inversion or whatever, if she, you know - like gave the Force what it wanted, that it would go away and let her bust her brothers in peace?

No, no, no, no, no, no .

Her face paled slightly, and she awkwardly cleared her throat and desperately tried to drive the horrible thoughts out of her brain. "SO," she announced, probably too loudly. "What about - where's Seven?"

"Seven?" Five looked almost surprised, and her face darkened a shade or two. "I - I don't know."

"Really? You - you guys were always together, I mean."

"Yeah." Five rolled her eyes. " Were being the operative word there." She gestured up to her own face, to the dark bruise under her left eye - one that Candace One hadn't really paid any attention to until now. "Until she decided to punch me in the face for no other reason than not wanting to say that the world would have been better off without my brothers."

"That's - that's stupid," One replied.

" She's stupid," Five retorted. "She acts like she thinks the way to respond to one extreme is with the other. Four wants to marry our brother, and Seven wants to kill him, and no one knows how to function normally around him." She paused for second. "Except you? I guess."

"I guess." One was… somewhat miffed at the tone of voice, but decided to ignore it this one time. If Seven'd really done that to Five, then she figured she could cut Five a little slack, this one time. "I try."

Candace Five smiled half-heartedly. "I'm sure you do." She stopped and sighed. "But whatever. I - I probably shouldn't talk about her. It just gets me riled up, and I don't need anymore of that here, even though goodness knows she probably deserves it."

Candace One shrugged. She'd not really spent much time interacting with Seven a great deal, for many reasons. And although it felt… selfish? to be relieved that Five had also gotten fed up with Seven ( especially if that had resulted in her getting punched ), but she couldn't deny that she was , at least a little. Now she would be able to talk to Five without having to worry about running into Seven, which was definitely good, at least as far as she figured.

"So what have you been up to, then?" Five asked. "Found anything interesting around here, aside from, you know, incest being A-OK and whatnot?"

Candace One frowned slightly before shrugging. "Not really. Oh, uh, Three let me borrow her phone? It's alright as far as keeping me busy, I guess, though I'd rather be b- uh, buying things at the mall." She cleared her throat. "Yeah."

"Suppose that would be preferable to just sitting here, yeah," Five agreed. "Though there's not many things that could be worse , really."

"Guess not." Candace One shrugged. "Though that does kinda sound like a good idea, actually."

"What does?"

"The mall, I mean," she clarified. "I… don't really know where anything is here, but I'm sure there's someplace to go. I mean - the Googolplex is gotta be here in this dimension too, right?"

"I… do not know," Five replied. "I didn't actually spend much time exploring here. I wasn't ever particularly, you know, interested in it."

"Well, I'm bored ," Candace One decided. "And there's gotta be something out there to do - some place to go. Googolplex, no Googolplex, I mean, Candace Four's gotta get her clothes from somewhere, right?"

"That is true," Five admitted. "I guess you can get a souvenir from traveling to another dimension? If you wanted to remember incest-land, which I can't really see any reason to do, really."

"No… I won't do that ," One said, smiling slightly despite herself. "But it'll still be a better way to pass the time than sitting here reading the stuff that Four's got around here. It's the dullest stuff you ever saw."

"Well, you have fun, I guess," Five replied. "Heck, maybe I should get out of here too. But I think I ought to get something to eat first."

"I guess I'll see you later then," One said. "Bye."

Candace Five gave a small wave. "Bye."

And as Candace One pulled herself back to her feet and walked out of the room, she found herself thinking that that hadn't been quite so bad after all. It'd been awkward at first, sure, but at least she and Five could relate on what had pretty much become the most hotly debated topic among everyone - and for good reason. And that was pretty much enough motivation to make Candace One want to remain on good terms with the woman, or at least good enough terms.

All she had to do was go home and remain solidly planted in her determination to keep dating Jeremy until they were wed. Which not something she had ever doubted before, but before she'd never been forced to fear her own brother the way she internally cowered before him now. It wasn't enough to fully counteract her desire to get home, but it definitely tinted her every thought as she looked forwards into the near future and quailed before what it had to offer her.

Just… don't think about that right now. Try not to think about it. Once she got home, it'd be easier, right? Three and Four and Six and Four's brother wouldn't be there. That would make it easier, right? Surely.

Of course, Five wouldn't be there either - she'd be there alone …. but she tried her best to box up those thoughts and shove them off to future Candace to deal with. Because that was totally a sustainable solution, right?

Totally.

When she passed Candace Two on her way into the basement, the woman reached out with her stick and blocked the door.

"Hey!" One exclaimed. "What gives?"

"O-one?" the woman stuttered, leaning in so closely that Candace One could feel her hot breath on her face. "Oh - oh." She straightened slowly, and moved out of the way of the door. "Pash."

One rolled her eyes, and walked past the deranged self-appointed 'guard' against whatever, into the basement room. Almost immediately she was reminded why she'd decided to go upstairs and hunt down Candace Five in the first place, as she caught catching Candace Four and her brother… doing something she refused to acknowledge in any way, snapping her hands up over eyes so fast that she nearly smacked herself. "Hello?!"

"One!" Four exclaimed, sounding mildly amused. "You really should announce yourself if you want to be more careful next time."

Candace One rolled her eyes behind her palms. "Yeah, whatever." This was why she was leaving in the first place. Well, one of the reasons, at least. "Is there a Googolplex here - you know, the mall?"

"Why?" Four asked.

"Oh, come on," Phineas Four spoke up. "You know why , sis. Don't pretend you don't."

"Oh, alright," Four relented. "Yeah, we do. Are you wanting to go there or something?"

"I am," Candace One replied. "But I'll walk," she hastily added. "I walk at home all the time, and I'll be fine here too. Just tell me where it is, and I'll be off."

"I can do better than that," Phineas Four said. "Here, you can look."

Candace One reluctantly lowered her hands to find him standing directly in front of her, with a small paper packet in his hands.

"It's a map of downtown Danville," he continued. "You can use it find your way anywhere you feel like going without getting lost. The Googolplex, the museum, the art museum, Whatever, or anywhere else."

"Huh." She reached out and took the map. "Thanks."

"Mmm hmm." He half-waved. "Have fun."

"I'll try, I guess."

She turned and rapidly strode out of the basement, past Candace Two, who was stretching up and poking the end of her stick inside a ventilation shaft, muttering something about hearing a voice from inside it? Whatever. She didn't particularly care about whatever Candace Two was getting up to - and the woman was obviously not paying close enough attention to hear her slip past anyway, which was all well and good.

She walked up the two flights of stairs to the ground floor, then stopped to check the map before setting out. Say, this looked rather similar to her own Danville. Different a bit, yeah, but the general street structure was mostly the same. She traced the route from the Googolplex on the map to the small road marked 'Maple Dr.' Did Candace and Phineas Four's parents even know what their children got up to? She couldn't reasonably think so. If they found out, those two would be so busted.

But whatever - for now, at least, Candace One was tired of thinking about incest and the versions of herself who were committing it.

(Maybe even right now.)

Ugh, where had that come from? Her face contorted in disgust as she pushed the doors of the building open and stepped out into the overcast late morning day. She needed to quit thinking about this, right now, and not a second later. And right now, she was planning to do that by shopping.

Okay, it wasn't a perfect plan. But right now, it was the best she had. And as she tucked the map into the pocket of her skort and set off down the sidewalk, it seemed a fairly decent one to her.

Though, she supposed, like with everything, only time would tell in the end.


	32. Sleep Tight

Candace Two was alone.

Well, not _technically_. Candace Three and Four and Four's brother were behind the door that she was guarding. The rest of the Candaces were… well, that wasn't particularly important. She couldn't quite remember, but it wasn't important.

Her head was hissing like an angry fire. It was a loud, tingly sort of feeling that strove to drive out her thoughts, that made it difficult to focus on anything, really, except perhaps something? She wasn't quite sure.

She was sure of one thing - protecting Phineas Four. That was her task. It was what she was doing, here, now. The concrete wall across from her stared back, the blank surface somehow seeming as if was staring through her brain. It would find nothing there anyway.

It was perhaps a good thing there was no clock in here? She couldn't be sure how much time had passed since she'd taken up her station here. Perhaps that was a good thing. She couldn't decide. The air hung thick and still around her, feeling closer to mud than air at any rate. She didn't intend to move from her post anyway.

A tremendous shudder reverberated through her limbs, forcing itself up through her spine and up to her head, and she yawned loudly. That - that was good thing, right? More oxygen to her brain. That _was_ a good thing, she was pretty sure.

Even though her back was to the wall, her senses still tingled with warning that someone was behind her. She tried to block them out. The buzzing her head was making it easy, honestly. Perhaps it _was_ good, then. Or something like that.

Maybe she should be pacing back and forth. Yes, that would probably be helpful. Taking some steps forwards instead of standing here in place. She would, too, just so soon as…

…

… what happened? She'd better check. It'd only been a split second, but a sneaking feeling of unease for her charge was developing the back of her mind. Reach out and open the door, then.

Brick b !cuits , was it was just her, or was it _cold_ in here? Oh, well, then. Whatever. Wasn't she supposed to have been doing something? Oh, right - pacing. She could do that.

Her staff came in handy here, providing a sturdy support to brace her oddly rubbery legs as she stepped forwards. Her left foot caught on a bump on the floor, but she was able to catch herself in time. Of course she could - she could handle this. It'd been, what… a day? Maybe two? (Honestly, she wasn't quite sure.)

A sudden thunderclap sounded overhead, followed another, and another. She tightened her grip on her staff, ready to fight to death against whatever unholy abomination was descending on her from above.

Another Candace suddenly turned the corner, her footsteps echoing as loud as gunshots as she approached. Who was it? It was like there was a thick fog following them around, obscuring whatever was scrawled on the nametag she was wearing. Candace Two blinked, but the fog refused to dissipate.

"Hold up," she ordered, lifting her hand.

The other Candace stopped and said … something? Candace Two couldn't quite make it out. She shook her head violently - well, that was a mistake, probably, what with the buzzing. It felt like there were rocks banging around inside her skull. But the pain also served as brief spurt of energy, too - and for a second, Candace Two felt wide awake.

"... your problem?" the other Candace said. "Can't you - are you intoxicated or something?"

Why did everyone assume this? There was no reason to. Whatever. She could make out the letters on the nametag now. S - I - X. Which spelled, uh, six, right? Yeah. Therefore - Candace Six. She knew that. Obviously.

"You can - can - can - can -" where was she going with this sentence again? "- can go." Oh, right.

Candace Six rolled her eyes and walked past, disappearing into the basement door. For a brief moment, Candace Two caught a fleeting glimpse of Phineas Four in there. Somebody else was in there, too, with their arms wrapped around him. Wait… who was that? A twinge of worry shot through her and she contemplated how long it would take her to burst down the door and separate from him from his sister.

Oh, wait, yeah - _that's_ who that was. Nevermind, then. There was no cause for alarm, at least not yet. The base of her spine was still tingling. _Somebody_ was watching her, she could feel it.

Her eyes traced the metal slats covering the ventilation shaft mounted on the wall opposite to her. There were one, two, three, four, four, four, four, five, six, seven, eight slats. Horizontal ones, criss-crossing back and forth across the opening of the shaft in a criss-cross pattern. And there were eight slats - the same number as Candaces, right? Something about that struck Candace Two. It _couldn't_ have been a coincidence.

She stared ever harder at the slats as she tried to figure out who was behind this devious plot. Doofenshmirtz, of course. The slats were moving up and down now, getting farther away and dimmer and…

...

...suddenly her head snapped upright, and she narrowed her eyes. Something was very wrong. The buzzing in her head was making it difficult to concentrate. She turned and stared into the corner that was behind her. There was something behind her, she just knew it. Where had it gone?

She was interrupted in her hunt for the vantage point by the disturbing realization that the vent across the room was leaking thick, inky wisps of smoke into the stairwell. They drifted out from between the slats, like someone had lit a campfire in the ventilation system. She waved her arm in the air, trying to disperse the scentless smoke.

No matter how much smoke poured out of the vent, it never seemed to collect in the stairwell.

She ought to be doing something about this. Someone was trying to sabotage the building - to burn it down. They were trying to kill everyone - kill Phineas Four - and she couldn't allow that.

The doorknob had apparently been covered in grease in the meantime. Her hand slipped and slid around on the slick surface, but she eventually got ahold of it and pushed the door open.

"Phineas! We have to go - now!"

Well, that wasn't right. He looked up from a desk or something, but didn't get up. Whatever - she wasn't giving him an option. This was an _order_. He needed to listen.

He said something in response, but his voice was oddly distorted, as if he'd been a long way away. Which, to be fair, he kinda was… she'd never noticed that the basement was so wide before. But she needed to cross it, and so she would.

Okay, maybe it wasn't so wide as it had first appeared? The pounding in her head was making it difficult to judge. She moved across the open floor as quickly as she could, and grabbed onto Phineas Four's shoulder. He was shaking badly, she noticed. Well, he was probably terrified, what with having his dreams about to go up in flames. But as long as she was here, he could rest assured that he himself was going to come out unscathed.

She pulled him after her, heading back towards the stairwell. Somebody said something from behind her? She couldn't really understand any of it. Maybe if she stopped to concentrate or something. But that wasn't what was important right now. She reached the stairwell door and opened it, still dragging Phineas Four after her as she stepped through it and immediately ran into face-first into a wall.

Wait, what?

"Two," someone said. "Why are we in the closet?"

"Who's there?" she demanded, turning around. Something about being the dark was disorienting, and she rocked back and and forth madly until she found something tall and hard to lean on and stabilize herself.

What had happened to the stairwell anyway? Why _was_ she in the closet? She blinked, but the pounding in her brain had worsened, and she really couldn't remember. Protect Phineas and Ferb. Out of the whirling gooey cesspool spinning out of control in her thoughts, that one idea remained steadfast, too firmly drilled into her psyche to ever be overridden by whatever was happening to her right now. Maybe Doofenshmirtz did this. Right?

"It's me - Phineas," Phineas said. Well, duh.

"I know that, you idiot," she snapped, a sudden flare of irritation bursting up from inside her at nothing in particular It was _dark_. That was _irritating_. Yes. Her head was hurting like that time that NORMbot had hit her on the back of the head that one time three years ago. _Irritating_. "Now shut up and stick close."

Suddenly light flooded inwards, blinding her. Her sunglasses were the only things protecting her her eyes from being burnt out from the sudden ignition of the sun itself inside the room.

"What are you even doing?" someone _else_ asked. Where did all these people keep coming from? Candace Two was having a hard time keeping them all straight in her head.

Focus. She blinked again, her eyes adjusting painfully slowly to the light pouring into the room. It hurt her eyes, the light. It was too bad she couldn't stay in the darkness. But she couldn't - she had a job to do, and it would get done, regardless of light or darkness or any such things.

"Hello?" Candace Four demanded. Why was she saying hello? It wasn't like they'd left. Candace Four was just being obnoxious for some reason. Whatever - it wasn't going to stop _her_.

"Get out my way," Two said, pushing her way past Four and stepping back out into the basement's greater floor. She'd never noticed, apparently, that the floor in here was sloped. It was like standing on the side of a hill - very difficult to stand up straight.

Still, she had a job to do, slope or slope. She put even more weight on her staff, and it bowed under its load, but held firm nonetheless. It was like anchor, holding her steady even though the walls around were swimming like a badly disguised holographic projection.

Maybe they _were_ projections… you never knew what was really real, did you? Doofenshmirtz was capable of some awful things. You never knew.

"Are you feeling alright, Two?" That was Phineas' voice. She would have recognized it anywhere. It would have woken her from the grave if necessary. "Is something wrong?"

Keep him safe. No, he mustn't worry. She was here - he was going to be alright. "Everything's fine." Her tongue felt oddly noncompliant in her mouth, as if it was much larger than it should reasonably be. "Fine," she repeated. "Fine. Fine." For some reason, she couldn't get the word out right. "Fine." She wasn't sure why she kept trying to say it.

Phineas Four looked at his sister, and something almost tangible passed between them. Long experience of making Doofenshmirtz's few human subservients tell her whatever she wanted to hear had taught her much about body language and how to interpret it. There was a _reason_ that she was the only member of the OWCA's interrogation department, after all - she could handle the things that everyone was too soft to stomach, apparently. She'd never looked at it like that. She _couldn't_ look at like that. When you saw the things she had, some things just… stopped bothering you.

Even so, she was finding it difficult to interpret _this_ particular situation. Candace Four's facial features were kind of… hazy, like her sunglasses had some sort of smear across the lenses. Perhaps she should wipe them off. Well, not here, of course. When she was alone.

There was a lingering feeling of unease hanging in the back her mind, like a curtain that was filtering any light attempting to struggle through it. Her thoughts were coming frustratingly slowly, as if she couldn't quite _think_ fast enough anymore. The constant, unceasing headache was still there, pounding away behind her eyes, but she refused to acknowledge the pain, and forced herself to keep her eyes open wide. This was her ultimate calling - her purpose in life. Protector of her brothers. It was what she did - what she _was_. There was no other reason or goal or motivation, nor did there need to be one. It was why she lived her life at all, and why she'd lived it the way she had.

If she got home and Doofenshmirtz had so much as touched even a single hair on her brothers' head, she was going to bring down on that man's head a rain of hellfire so intense that all before it would summarily be destroyed. OWCA wanted to _apprehend_ him, to try him for his crimes against humanity, which was all fine and good by her.

Unless he'd even entertained the _thought_ of doing her brothers harm. Then there would be no force in any Earth or any heaven that would save him from her. She would hunt him down to the ends of the Earth and extract revenge the extent of which the world had never seen before - and would likely never see again.

Of course, that was never going to happen. She wouldn't allow it. And that had… something to do with why she was standing here?

Suddenly, she was very confused. How had she gotten here? She'd just been out there in the stairwell, and now was… not. She racked her brain as much as she could muster, and nothing turned up to explain this seeming teleportation. It must be Doofenshmirtz's doing, then.

"Two!" Phineas said from right next to her. She faintly registered his voice in the back of her head somewhere, but it was dull and hollow and echoey. If only he would speak normally, she thought.

"I have to get back…" back where, again? Oh, right. "To the OWCA." No, that wasn't right. "The shtairwell." Hmm, that didn't come out quite right. "Shta-" Oh, screw it. They knew what she meant. If her tongue wasn't going to cooperate, then she would leave it behind too.

She grimaced slightly, taking a step forward and staggering heavily as her foot sank down into a depression in the middle of the floor. This building was a lot more rickety than she remembered.

She felt someone touch her on the arm, a surprisingly warm touch that sent a jolt through her limbs, and for a split second, she was sure she was being attacked. Spinning as quickly as was possible, it was likely by sheer luck alone that Phineas Four managed to step back in time to avoid her swing.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Wh - what?" Candace Two frowned and tried to concentrate. "Don't touch me."

"Sorry." Well, he should be. She was supposed to _protecting_ him, and it would have been rather counterintuitive if she'd accidentally brained him after being startled.

The tingling in her spine came back. Someone, somewhere was watching her, and she didn't like it one bit. She had almost a sixth sense for these things normally. She trusted her intuition on these sorts of things. It had been honed over the years to a razor-edge that never failed her. Why it was so randomly misfiring now, she couldn't figure out.

"Two?"

"I've got go back," she repeated. "Someone could come up on us." She paused awkwardly, suddenly unable to remember if she'd actually said the previous sentence out loud or not. "Somebody could come up on us." Well, that solved that issue. Now she had a job to do.

"Seriously, Two," Phineas started. His voice was somewhat soothing. She could probably have stood there and listened to it all day. He was rambling on and she couldn't really make _sense_ of it, but the unintelligible babble was disarming. "How long has it…"

….

"-Two?!"

"What?!" she snapped, glancing around. Where was she again? At… in the basement. Right. For some reason, there was water dripping down her face, and she reached up and wiped it off, frowning at Phineas Four. "What?"

"How long has it been since you last _slept_?"

She blinked. Slept? It'd been… a little while. How long, though? Uh... what time was it now? She looked up at the clock on the wall, but the little black squiggles on it swam around in her vision, becoming impossible to read. It couldn't have been _that_ long, she reasoned. Just because she couldn't very well _remember_ it didn't mean anything.

It had been when she was at home. She remembered that much. Even that was fuzzy though… like her brain was refusing to bother fetching memories for her to look at. It was aggravating, really… but whatever. She couldn't let it interfere with the more pressing need. She couldn't afford to be lazy with everything at stake the way it was.

"A - a day," she said. "Maybe two." Then she frowned. "Why is thish so important to you anyway?" There was an awkward pause. "Thish. Thish. _Th-i-s_." Why was it so difficult to enunciate things all of the sudden? It was like her tongue was rebelling against her.

 _Doofenshmirtz_.

She shivered, and rubbed her arms in attempt to warm up. Everything was so _cold_ now. It was a strange situation, really. Something fishy was going on, she could feel it her bones. And the rest of her muscles too, which had started aching all over. Just a little bit, creeping up over her like some kind of annoyingly painful blanket. And speaking of blankets… she was pretty sure that box over there in the corner had just moved.

Not a lot, but more than a box should be able to move of its own accord. It had been only out of the corner of her eye, but she was ready to _swear_ that it had. She stared hard at, daring whatever fiend was hiding beneath it to move again.

"She's not even listening to you, Phineas. You know that, right?"

"Huh?" Candace Two blinked. "I know what?"

"Two, look at me," Phineas Four directed, taking hold of her arms and positioning himself directly in front of her. "How _long_ , Two? Since you _slept_?"

She stared aimlessly into his blue eyes, listening to his words, and trying to comprehend them. (It wasn't _that_ hard, was it? No.) He wanted to know… how… long… it had been since… she… had gone to sleep. Oh, right. Hadn't she just answered this question? Whatever - she'd humor him this once on account of his similarity to her own brother.

Whoa, he really _was_ similar. Maybe if he trimmed his hair shorter and changed his-

" _Two_."

"One!" she said. "I... think."

"It has _not_ been one day," he said back. "One _week_ , maybe. Look at yourself, I mean, you're an…"

Somewhere behind her, she was aware of something moving around. A NORMbot maybe, something she should turn around and confront. Alright, it was time to do this, then.

The floor was sticky like glue, clinging to the bottom of her feet and making it exceedingly difficult to move. The effort that take to lift her feet up and take a step was momentous. She found herself leaning into her staff again, using the sturdy metal as leverage to keep herself up. The floor was rocking back and forth, she could feel, as she struggled to maintain balance. But everything and everyone here was _depending_ on her ability remain on her feet. She couldn't fail.

She bit down on her tongue as hard as she could muster. The pain was like a jolt of energy shooting through her body. The room around slowed down slightly in its spinning, and the spots floating in her vision briefly grew fainter. She was running on borrowed time now - it was time to make the best of it.

There was nothing behind her.

Something scurried past her feet, just inside her peripheral vision.

"Two!" The voice slowly cut through the thick fog in the air, the intense buzzing in her head. Her staff felt… odd in her hand, and she had to double-check to make sure she was indeed still holding onto it with her left hand. Or was that the right one? It was one of those three, at least.

"Listen to me!"

"I'm _lishening_ ," she growled. Something about the sound of her own voice amused her. "Lishening." How funny was that? She burst into convulsions of laughter that shook her all over, permeating every extremity and knocking her knees out from under her. How had she never realized how _funny_ this was before? "Lishening." Something warm grabbed onto her arm, propping her up. What was it? She couldn't tell from the touch. Was she even holding her staff anymore? Better double-check her other hand again.

No, no she was not. Where had it gone?

Suddenly, a shrill beeping from the far side of the room sliced through the euphoria, and she struggled to her feet. What was that? Was she even holding her staff anymore? Better double-check her other hand again.

No, no she was not. Where had it gone?

She narrowed her eyes and pointed at Candace Four. "You! You did this! Show yourself, Doofenshmirtz, I _know_ that's you!"

Candace Four Doofenshmirtz started, taking a step back. Obviously trying to run away, or something. Candace Two lurched after her, angling her trusty staff so as to come down on man's head and bring him down with one blow. Wait a second - she wasn't even holding it anymore. Well, that was unexpected. And unfortunate. Without it, she stumbled across the floor and tripped over something, catching onto something before actually _falling_.

"Where did he go?" she demanded, leaning heavily onto Candace Four. " _Where did he go_?"

She staggered back to her feet. Four said something, but it sounded less like speech and more like an electrical generator humming in the background. The spots were back, drifting here and there, generally being aggravating.

Something reached up behind Four, then drew back just as quickly as soon as Two blinked and tried to focus on it. She shoved Four out of the way, intent on catching whatever it was, but there was nothing there. Nothing except empty floor. She frowned and stared into the pattern there, watching intently as it shifted back and forth with all the colors of the rainbow in an entrancing pattern of unceasing motion.

There was some sort of bug near her feet again. She checked her right hand. No staff. Right - she needed to find that.

When she turned around, however, Phineas Four was standing _right_ there. He looked weird, she thought, up close. Had she ever noticed how triangular his head was before?

"Two," he said slowly. His eyes shifted slightly, and she was sure he was looking at something or someone behind her. "Add twelve and seventeen." Who, though? She had to find out.

What? She shook her head. Why should she do that? It was a stupid idea. Twelve and seventeen. Twelve and seventeen. Uh… one and two, right? And seventeen. One and. Um. Seven, yes. So… like….

"Eleven." She rolled her eyes. "Duh. Now, get out of my face." She had a job to do, and had had enough of people trying to keep from doing it.

"Alright, that's quite enough," Phineas Four said. " _You_ need to get some sleep _now_."

"Sleep?" She frowned. There was no _time_ for that, even if it was nighttime. (Maybe it was? She couldn't remember. When was the last time she'd seen the sun? A few days ago? One day ago?) But _some_ body had to keep on the watch, to be prepared with Doofenshmirtz crashed in in the way he always did. And there was no one else around who was willing to do that. Of course, more importantly, there was no one she _trusted_ to that extent.

Once, her brothers had not known about her identity nor her role in the now-defunct Resistance. They had only seen her as their oft-absent older sister. And it had been for the best. She could be content with leaving them alone, under only the half-baked 'surveillance' that she'd order the Firestorm Girls to maintain on the house in her absences.

All that had changed once Phineas and Ferb had learned who she really was, of course. All of a sudden, they'd become high-priority targets for anyone who'd want to get to her. And she wasn't going to let that happen. She'd shifted her schedule, tightened surveillance, and increased security. Measures that weren't necessary before, but now that they were, she didn't grudge them. Phineas' and Ferb's safety was priority number _one_ … she was perfectly willing to sacrifice _anything_ to maintain it.

It was also why, now, her going to sleep to was out of the question. It might get annoying (at some point in the future) but she could stomach it. She'd handled worse before in the past, and she'd no doubt have to handle it again in the future. It was the way things happened - the way life worked.

"Two!" Phineas Four exclaimed, jarring her from the stupor that had crept up on her. "Are you hearing me?"

Why was he being so… so _pushy_ about this? It was getting on her nerves, and if the tingly feeling in her fingers and toes was any indicator, she was having enough trouble with those already.

"No." She turned away, and spied her staff lying on the floor right behind her. Who had put it there? She wasn't quite sure. Well, perhaps it wasn't _right_ behind her, at any rate - as she took a step towards it, it seemed to jump away from her as though it somehow had a mind and volition of its own. Which it didn't, of course, because it was a piece of metal, unless… it _did_. Her eyes narrowed slightly. Only Doofenshmirtz would think of something so… devious.

Behind her, someone was something, although she couldn't lay her finger on the voice. It couldn't have been that important anyway, right? She needed her weapon, no matter how far away it appeared to be.

One step, two steps, three steps, five.

At last, she reached it. So it wasn't that far after all. Only half-a-dozen steps. She reached down for it, plucking it up. Ah, it felt good to have it back in her hands again. And to use it as something to lean into when the pounding in her head randomly became extremely bad for a moment.

"I… return," she announced, after a moment's thought on the correct word for that place. "To my post."

That was where she _should_ have been, in all honesty. She couldn't remember why she'd ever left in the first place. If a NORMbot should be out there in the stairwell right now…

 **"Show me your papers or be destroyed."**

Candace Two sucked in her breath sharply, spinning around as rapidly as she could muster. _This_ was what she had been talking about! She let out a yell, trying to warn off Phineas Four - to tell him to duck and cover. Where was Candace Four? So long as she kept Four between him and the business end of the plasma cannon, he'd be tentatively alright for a few moments.

But no matter where her eyes searched, the hulking gray mass of the NORMbot was nowhere to be seen - neither in the basement, nor bursting through any of the doors connecting into it. But… how could this be? She'd _heard_ it.

"What's going on?" Phineas Four asked, his voice echoing oddly and grating on her ears.

"Under the table!" she spouted. "Go!" There wasn't much space between her and him. She stumbled over something on the floor, but grabbed ahold of his shoulder nonetheless. " _Hide_."

"Will you lay off?!" Candace Four demanded. "There is _literally_ nothing here to be afraid of."

Hmph. She wasn't going to keep letting her better instincts get overridden by these naive know-nothings. Candace Four continued to protest, but she wasn't listening, nor could she really understand her anyway. Tuning someone out was remarkably easy when you had to consciously focus on someone to pick their speech out from the ringing and the buzzing and the other random sounds that clogged up her hearing and her brain in general.

Phineas Four was not exactly _compliant_ either, but even now she still far stronger than he anyway. She pushed him down, under the table, hissing. "Stay there and don't make a _sound_."

She had to keep him safe - she had to _find_ that robot and destroy it, wherever it may be. Under a table wasn't exactly the _best_ place to be, but it was certainly better than any of the other options that were available around here.

Something skittered past her feet again, but she ignored it. Apparently this basement was also infested with little…. black, rat-like creatures. (She'd never managed to catch a good look at them - they managed to scamper off before she was able to focus on them.) It was no concern of hers, though.

She turned around again, intent on hunting for that death-machine she'd heard. It was around here _somewhere_ , the first of no doubt endless more waves. Doofenshmirtz would not rest until he was in power again, and for that to happen, he'd have to kill her. Before she could start, however, she found herself face-to-face with Candace Four. She looked… well, her face was all weird-looking, but it was at the same time unreadable to the point that Two really _couldn't_ tell how she was feeling. Or what exactly she was doing being an _obstruction_ when Candace Two really had more important things to be doing that dealing with this.

"That's quite enough," she demanded. "I don't know what you _think_ you saw, but it's _not_ _really there_."

A cold feeling settled into Candace Two's brain as she struggled to keep up with Four's suddenly acquired habit of speed-talking. It was like her thoughts were running through tar. "You _lie_ ," she eventually decided on. "You lie. _You_ lie. _You lie_."

"No, _you're_ delusional!" Four retorted.

"Lie," Two repeated. "Lie." She… was not entirely sure why she kept repeating it. It was like she couldn't quite cement it into her brain that she _had_ indeed said it, like her brain was refusing to form any short-term memory. "Lie. Lie. Lie."

Suddenly, Phineas Four was at Four's side too, with such great speed that it gave her a start. Where had he come from all of the sudden?

He said something, but it was far to soft for her to hear over the ringing in her ears and the buzzing in her head.

"Louder!" she insisted, deciding to ignore Candace Four again. She had a sneaking feeling that she was supposed to doing something right now, but she couldn't quite remember what that was supposed to be. (Perhaps 'protect Phineas and Ferb'. That was always a good guess - and never too far from the truth.)

Well, he couldn't get any safer than standing right next to her, that was for sure. And also Candace Four, who was… here? For some reason? Yes… she would be… useful for something. Maybe. Right now, however, the ideas just weren't coming, though.

Phineas Four repeated himself, but it was still too quiet to hear. Geez - what was with his seeming determination to whisper everything? This would be a lot easier if he would _not_ do that, for sure.

She clutched her staff tightly, leaning into it for support as she stood there in the middle of the spinning room, with its shadowy critter invasion and that constant feeling of being watched. She could have _sworn_ that she and Phineas and Candace Four weren't alone in there. It was just too… not-alone-vibes sort of thing for that. She didn't know _how_ she knew that, but she just _knew_ , okay? And she trusted her gut with this sort of thing - it had pulled through for her enough times in the past.

"You need to rest!" Phineas said, his face turning slightly red for some reason. "Two, I don't know how long it has been since you have gotten any, but apparently it has too long. _That_ is what is going on here."

"I'm _fine_ ," she retorted. " _You_ are more important than that right now." And her _own_ brothers would _always_ be more important than that could ever be. Sleep was something she could go without (and had many times in the past). Her brothers were… not.

He frowned. "Did you sleep last night?" No. "The night before?" No. "Before that?" Also no. They'd just arrived here on that night - how could she have been expected to _sleep_? "Before that?" Uhh… going back that far in that past was difficult - it made her head pound and her thoughts became muddled and fuzzy, and the spots in her field of vision floated in renewed number. But, she still faintly sort-of recalled the nights of the week past. The first (and as it had turned out, only) night she'd spent at that hotel with her brothers on that vacation. Had she slept then? No. Too dangerous. She'd _pretended_ to sleep, to please her brothers, but had been up every hour to check the perimeter and contact OWCA for status updates.

Phineas Four facepalmed. " _Please_ tell me you slept _sometime_ this week. _Please_."

There was a reason why this past week was still something she remembered. The attacks on which she'd led the strike team and effectively beheaded the rebellion in sector seventeen. But the paramilitary operation had taken place… at night, undercover of darkness. There'd been no time for sleep for then either. So, she shook her head. What was he driving at anyway?

"Last week, then?"

She shrugged on that one. Too far back - even just trying to _think_ about it made her headache worse. Couldn't really remember. Probably? It seemed like a fair guess.

"And there you have it. Two, when your _most conservative estimate_ of time awake is an _entire fortnight_ , you are _going_ to have issues. You _need_ to sleep, _now_."

"Are you crazy?" _Was_ he crazy? Perhaps. He did have that thing going on with his sister. Well, if they had the time for it, more power to them. But this - this was crazy. Something fell behind her, and she snapped her head around, trying to see what it was.

It was funny, almost… she could barely understand him when she wasn't looking directly at him. Well, it was difficult to comprehend either way, as her thoughts struggled through whatever goop was gumming up the inner workings of her brain.

"No, I'm _not_ ," he replied. "Look, Two, can't you _feel_ it?"

"Feel what?" She held up one hand, waving it slightly, feeling… nothing. The room was cold, but everything was cold now for some reason. _She_ was cold now for some reason. There were goosebumps all over her, and they wouldn't go away no matter how much she rubbed them. It was like she just _couldn't_ get warm. But it wasn't important. Her teeth chattered a little bit, but only just so. She clung to her staff, leaning into it for support as the room rocked back and forth beneath her.

"All _this_ ," Phineas Four returned. "I know you're smart enough to realize what's going on here."

Candace Four snorted and said something under her breath, but it was pretty much inaudible. In another situation, Two might have grabbed ahold of her and demanded to know what she'd said, but right now she… just… didn't quite… _feel_ like it. Nor did she feel like anything, really - she was so cold, but also so… she just didn't care, really.

Protect her brothers. That was all she cared about. This other stuff… didn't matter all that much. It never had, really, but it _really_ didn't matter now. She just couldn't be bothered. It was like… she just didn't care about anything.

"Two." he repeated. "Look at yourself." He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. His hand was surprisingly warm, like he'd been standing in a giant oven or something. It made her feel even colder by comparison, and she shivered, almost losing her grip on whatever was in her hand. She checked. It was her staff, right. How had she not known that? Well, she had, sort of - somewhere in the back of her mind, right?

Something moved down by her feet, and she stepped back slightly, trying to get it away from her. The fact that these things never seemed to move in her direct line-of-sight was rather unsettling. Doofenshmirtz's doing, in all likelihood. But she could see them in her peripheral vision. The bugs, the sense that she was being watched, the shapeless masses of black that lurked in the far corners of her senses, defying her attempts to label them.

"You need rest - you need _sleep_ ," Phineas Four said, making some sort of weird face. "That's what's going on with you. You _know_ that, don't you?"

The words sounded vaguely familiar as they echoed about in her head. They sounded something like what her _own_ brother occasionally told her. Or used to say to her. She'd started pretending to go to sleep more often over the past few years. It kept them happier when she was up for so long. Still, though, even then - she never went more than one or two days in a row. OWCA was there, keeping their home under constant surveillance. She'd personally overseen extensive modifications to their bunker, ensuring that it was as safe as possible. And most importantly, there was always _someone_ watching. Someone she could trust.

Be it one of OWCA's animal agents, or a member of the Firestorm Girls, or whatnot, there was always a sentinel on alert, ready to raise the alarm at the slightest sign of trouble. And that left her free to do such things as sleep. (Albeit with one eye open, but that was a habit that she'd had since her childhood anyway.)

Here was an entirely different story. One that was both so simple that anyone with two brain cells to rub together could understand it, and yet was also so important that it literally superseded all else.

Her brothers needed her protection. To give them that, she needed to be _there_. Phineas Four was that route home, she knew that. Doofenshmirtz would know that too. He would try to keep her from getting home, and would do so by killing off her route. Which was the very thing she was determined was _never_ going to happen.

And if no one else would stand shifts during the night, that was fine. Candace Two did not trust any of these other Candaces to with such an important task anyway. She'd never even met them before now, aside from Candace Four, who had not at all changed from the naive and irresponsible and occasionally flat-out _foolish_ girl she'd been at fifteen.

She would do it all.

It was taxing. What she was asking - no, demanding - of her body was not something that was _possible_ , even. To stay awake and alert indefinitely was something no man, woman, or child could do. But Candace Two was darn well going to try, and more importantly, no matter how bad it got, she was _still_ more confident in her own skills than in anyone else's.

She felt her head nodding off to one side, and forced it back upright with a tremendous conscious effort. It was like _everything_ required conscious thought now. She had to think about speaking, think about forming her tongue to pronounce the words, think about every step she took. And the raging headache behind her eyes did _not_ help with that.

"I.. understand," she replied breathlessly All this thinking was taking a _lot_ of effort. Effort to keep herself upright despite the spinning room, the unstable floor. Effort to fight back against buzzing and static that filled her brain, the stickiness of her thoughts and their refusal to flow freely. Effort to _remember_ things without them slipping entirely from her grasp within seconds of occurring.. "But - no. I cannot."

"Cannot?" Phineas echoed. "Why _not_?"

She frowned. "Because - because…" Agh, it was right there - she'd _had_ it. And now it was gone again. Why _couldn't_ she? "Because I have to keep you safe."

Candace Four was gone, having somehow disappeared. Where had she gone? When had she gone? Had she ever been here at all? None of these questions had good answers to them.

"I understand _that_ ," Phineas Four said. "But I _am_ safe here." He stopped for a second. Two clung to her staff, rocking back and forth to the swaying of the floor. "Look, would it make you happy if I promised to stay - stay in the same room and not move? We can go wherever you want - I'll lock it down tighter than Fort Knox."

The offer may have sounded reasonable to someone not so well versed in reality as Two. She didn't even know what fortknocks was. And, thankfully, Two was the one making the final decision. "Thish ish _not_ up for - for discussion," she said. "You do not _know_ what Doofenshmirtz is _capable_ of. All the - all the fancy gadgets in the world won't be enough - never have been, and never will be. How else do you think he took over in the first place?" She looked over her shoulders. Something was hiding in the dark space of the closet, she could feel it. Could see its eyes in the shadows, staring relentlessly into her soul.


	33. Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite

"What do I need to do, then?"

The sudden voice startled her. Who was that? She jerked back around and found, of all people, Phineas Four. What? Where had _he_ come from? Wasn't he supposed to be… be… somewhere else? Somewhere… that … she couldn't quite label right now? Where _was_ he supposed to be? Maybe… uh….

….

" _Two_!"

The voice sliced through the thick, goopy air and shattered straight into her choked-up brain. "What?!" She glared at Phineas Four. "Do _not_ do that!"

"What do I need to do?" he exclaimed. "To make you get some _rest_? Can you _not_ see what's happening to you?"

She stared at him. Then yawned, so long and loud that it felt it was going to dislocate her jaw. Then stared some more. "Oh, wait… what? To sleep?" Was that what they were talking about? She felt like it was. She reached up and tremblingly pushed her sunglasses farther up the bridge of her nose. They'd crept almost to the edge, and she couldn't let them fall off.

Phineas Four nodded.

"Someone - someone has to watching you," she said. "Someone I can _trust_ , someone who would not hesitate to _die_ , if it be - be - becomes necessary." Keeping her brothers safe _was_ the most important thing in her life, after all. Self-preservation, like everything else, must bow before that goal. It was not something she would have done grudgingly. They were worth it. She had already sacrificed everything else for them, and held no grudges for it. When you looked at it like that, the 'ultimate price' was not so ultimate after all. It it came to that, it was a bill she was willing to pay.

She coughed violently, sending tremulous convulsions up and down her spine. "And there is no one who can fill those requirements here. Except for me." Phineas Four was already frowning again, and she could tell he was about to object. It was time pull rank on him a bit, apparently. Her _own_ brothers respected her decisions. They knew she had their best interests always foremost, and always obeyed when she required it. Phineas Four would do that same, in time. "Thisssh is non-negotiable. Do _not_ try to sway me."

He opened his mouth for a moment, but then closed it without saying anything. At least, she was fairly sure he said nothing, although she supposed she might possibly have just missed it. Something moved behind him, and she was distracted for a second, trying to determine just what it was and where it had gone. There was some sort of a hissing sound in the background as well, coming from who-knew-where.

It didn't sound like a gas leak, at least. More like a snake, oddly enough. Where was that snake at? She would kill it.

"I can - I can get a security robot?" he asked. Not the snake - although that was her thought. It was Phineas Four, though.

She shook her head violently. " _No_!" The _naivety_ of people sometimes. Technology was all fine and dandy, and helpful, even. But you could never, never, _never_ put all your trust in it. Not in a situation this important. To do so would be to _ask_ for disaster. Why did no one get this? She didn't know.

He seemed to think. Candace Two stared at him, watching the strands of red hair on his forehead intently as they swayed back and forth. It was entrancing, really. She felt like she could have just stood there and stared all day. All day. All day, at the thin strands, so many of them. They were so adorable. She felt herself cracking an awkward grin as she stared, unblinking, into the hair. Maybe she should try to _count_ them. One. Two. Three. What came next? Four, right. Now… oh, shoot, she'd lost her place. Was she at three or four? Eh, don't think too much about it. Just keep rolling. Six.

"Two. Are you there?"

The sudden voice from nowhere startled her, and lifted up her staff to protect herself. "Who said that? Show yourself!"

"Two." Phineas Four was suddenly in front of her. "It's me."

A shapeless blob reached in from the corner of her vision, like a inky tentacle, one that quickly retracted the instant she tried to catch it up in her direct vision or pin it down to the ground with her staff. Admittedly, she was not running on all cylinders right now. But her reflexes weren't _that_ slow. Yet it was just too fast.

"Who can I get?" Phineas Four asked, distracting her. Her eyes flitted up to meet his. "Who can I get that you will be content leaving in charge of me while you rest?"

She couldn't help but shake her head grimly at him. "In _your_ dimension? Good luck finding _anyone_." The spots in her vision were getting _really_ annoying by now. She blinked rapidly, trying to shoo them away, but it wasn't helping that much. There really _were_ a lot of them now, that was for sure.

"No one?" he repeated, as if _he_ was the one having issues with comprehension all of the sudden. Still, she was immoveable. Perhaps not _literally_ , right at the moment, given how much conscious effort she was having to constantly expend to stand to stand up straight without falling over. Lean this a way a little, move your right foot slightly to the left because you're swaying to the right, and etc, etc, etc.

"How about - about Ferb?"

She snorted. "Right." That one was not happening. She loved her brothers, but no one would be more honest than she. Ferb was brilliant in many ways, but he was not the one to be relied on to protect himself and his brother, much less the Ferb from this dimension, who she had only met briefly, but even that brief meeting had been enough to convince her that he wasn't the type for what needed to be done.

It was nothing against _him_ , of course - Candace Two wouldn't have had it any other way. Her brothers shouldn't _have_ to go through the things she had. That was the whole reason she'd done what she had with her life… she'd sacrificed so that they wouldn't have to, wouldn't _need_ to.

"What about… _my_ Candace? I can get her to promise to not leave me alone for a second, if that makes you feel better."

"How about _no_. Trust me, I've _seen_ Four. She may _be_ me, but she can _not_ replace me." Not even _Six_ was capable of the sort of thing Two knew was required, and if _she_ couldn't then Four? Definitely not. She'd seen plenty. Four (and One and Three and Five and Six and Seven) were all the same - impulsive, hasty, governed by emotion, affected by empathy, naive, inattentive, careless, and reckless. Not qualities that would be very conducive to staving off Doofenshmirtz, for sure.

He frowned deeply. "How about… how about Isabella?"

"Isabella?" Candace Two's eyes were starting to burn, and she slowly blinked. Ah, that was better. Might want to do it once more, just to be sure. "Isabella?" No, that was a terrible idea too. Well, to be _absolutely_ fair, it at least wasn't as bad as the previous two. Or three - she wasn't sure how many he'd suggested by this point. It felt like she'd been standing here for weeks already. But she didn't mind so much. As long as he was in her sight, he was going to be okay. Of course, that also meant that he needed to be working on her way home, which was a matter she would bring up poste-haste.

"Come on," he urged. "I've known her for a long time. She's - she was the leader of Fireside Girls' troop 46231 for years as a kid and a teenager, and she's still involved with them, though less directly now that she's grown. I mean, the Fireside Girls are… basically one-half Girl Scout troop and one-half special ops unit. It's not something someone can just _join_." He shrugged slightly. "I mean, they wrestle alligators and move mountains and display reckless disregard for life and limb. Have you _seen_ Danville Mountain? I mean, you can't see it now, because we're in the basement, obviously, but it used to be over _there_. And now it's over _there_. And guess who moved it?"

Candace Two stared. "So? I _fail_ to see how _any_ of that translates to what I must - what she would have to do." She thought hard, conjuring up from her clogged mind an image of the Isabella Garcia-Shapiro that she knew from her own dimension. (Would she be Isabella Two? Perhaps.) Isabella had been her second-in-command in the Resistance for several years, after Buford had gotten too good at resisting and had started resisting the Resistance. Which was stupid, by the way, but she'd have been stupid to turn down perfectly good muscle over a squabble on semantics.

Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, hmm? She'd never been so devoted to the cause as Candace Two herself had been. There _was_ a reason for that, as well - she'd been practically a toddler when Doofenshmirtz seized power, and had been still a child when he fell. She had been able to adapt more readily back to the quasi-civilian life that straddled between the rebuilding of the society and battling off marauding forces. It was something that had long since withered and died inside Candace Two, and could not be revived no matter how she tried. Admittedly, she hadn't tried hard.

At Candace Four's urging, she'd taken Jeremy Johnson into consideration. She'd tried to find something inside herself to rekindle… what she'd lost. But it had been no use. There was nothing left. Even Johnson had seen that after a few days, and though he'd clearly hoped otherwise, he'd been sorely disappointed. It just wasn't her - not anymore. And she _had_ tried. And for a few days, she'd worn the facade of Candace Flynn, normal teenager. But it was just that - a facade, one that fell apart all too soon.

And that was why _she_ had given up on it. Candace Flynn, normal teenager - normal adult - was dead. All that was left now was Candace Two. She didn't mind. Her brothers still needed her protection, her city needed her protection, her mortal enemy needed a comeuppance. And that was all there was to it.

It was markedly different from Isabella Garcia-Shapiro's own experience, or at least so it appeared. _She_ hadn't known quite the extent of the horrors that Candace Two had seen. She hadn't been hardened by as many years of exposure to the utter cruelty of Doofenshmirtz as Candace Two had been. And when Doofenshmirtz had fallen, the lesser toll that had been taken on her psyche had become exceedingly clear. She'd taken back to civilian life, and she'd been able to _remain_ there, despite her continued position inside the OWCA, and, of course, had eventually fallen in love with and resultantly married Ferb.

Candace Two had been happy that day. Happy for her brother - happy that she'd managed to preserve such things inside him even despite the dictatorship and tyranny he'd cowered under for a large portion of his life. She'd done her job, well, a part of it, at least.

Still, despite the younger woman's… different nature, she was still more or less dependable in times of crisis. She _was_ a member of OWCA, after the Firestorm Girls and the Resistance had been absorbed into the organization, and she _was_ an officer in the Tri-State Militia. She was, for lack of a different way to put it, someone that Candace Two did, to an extent, trust.

Of course, all these observations were academic. Academic because they were about the Isabella that Candace Two knew from home - Isabella Two? And there was no guarantee that Isabella _Four_ would be anything like the one she knew. After all, just look at how different _Candace_ Four was from her.

She'd gotten several fleeting glimpses of Isabella Four last afternoon, but hadn't particularly watched the other woman very closely, or paid her a grand amount of attention after ensuring that she posed no threat to Phineas Four.

Maybe it would have been a good thing if she _had_ been paying more attention to her then. Of course, that was hardly possible right now. It was sapping so much of her energy to do what she was doing now - to just have a normal conversation with Phineas Four - that trying to introduce another energy drain to the situation would probably be highly unwise.

But for all the things that Candace Two was, and all the things she wasn't - she wasn't stupid. Of all the Candaces in this building, heck, likely of all the _people_ in this building in general, she was best equipped and prepared for such things as her long series of continuous allnighters, both physically and mentally, honestly.

But not even she could manage it _forever_.

Soon enough, her body would start running low on energy. And in lack of anything to refill those reserves, it would begin shutting down - with or without her conscious approval. She knew it was coming eventually, and was determined to stave that eventuality off for as long as was humanly possible. She didn't know how long it would take Phineas Four to get her home, but was grimly determined that it would _not_ outlast her wakefulness, even if it took him an entire week or more. (Which was looking more likely at every turn, given that it had already been over three days.)

She was _not_ tired. Not in the slightest.

There was more movement near her feet, and she briefly tried to stamp down on whatever it was that kept moving down there. This was getting _really_ annoying and disorienting. She was having enough trouble staying on her feet without having to deal with these little critters all the time - and she couldn't even tell what they _were_ , beyond shapeless masses of darkness and a strong sense from somewhere that they did not have good intentions in mind.

"Well?"

That was Phineas Four. She'd completely forgotten he was standing there, but there he was, large as life. Whoa, how interesting.

"Well, what?"

"What - I mean, what about _Isabella_?"

"Oh, yeah…" Candace Two frowned. She'd have to give this matter thought, after all, this _was_ a very important matter. Very, _very_ important. Really, though, she didn't quite… _get_ why this was such a huge deal for Phineas Four. Sure, her _own_ brothers worried about her, and over much the same thing, apparently, but Phineas Four? What reason would _he_ have to worry over the safety and wellbeing of someone like her? The idea ran contrary to everything _she_ knew, everything _she_ understood, everything _she_ was perhaps even capable of feeling.

She wasn't stupid, though.

Although it may have been too far beyond her own grasp for her to reclaim any longer, _this_ was sort of thing she'd given so much for to protect in her own brothers. The innocence, the naivety, the ingenuous, starry-eyed view of the world, the blissful oblivion to the truest extent of the horrors it contained.

In the family she adored - in her own two brothers - she'd known since seeing them for the _very_ first time that so long as she still held breath in her body, no harm would _ever_ come to them. And none ever had.

They meant more to her than did anything else in existence. Her entire life had consisted of bending over backwards to ensure they could stand up straight, and she would do it again in heartbeat, every time, given a thousand do-overs.

And so it was, then, that she shook her head. Shook her head and relented at last.

"I will _meet_ thish woman," she slurred, her words coming out discombobulated despite her best effort to keep them clear. "I will give her a chance."

She - Isabella Four - would get a chance. She would only get _one_ , and if she failed, then Candace Two would never extend to her another. Second chances were not a luxury she gave to anyone. But, if by some great miracle, she should prove to measure up to standard, well, what _would_ she do?

Phineas Four wanted her to sleep. Her _own_ brothers would have wanted the same thing, she knew. This discussion was not one totally strange to her, even if it was being held now under more extreme circumstances than ever before. Phineas often tried to tell her that she should take care of herself, instead of focusing solely on them. She knew he meant well, of course, even though she never _could_ do that.

Compared to them, she simply wasn't _worth_ the care, nor the effort. Phineas and Ferb were innocent and pure, even after so many years of difficult adulthood in a society still in the throes of reconstruction. She was… not. She _knew_ who she was. Cold, hard, and unfeeling - things that she'd _had_ to be, things that she still had to be, for their sake. It was too late now to change herself.

But so long as her brothers managed to live out their lives normally - managed to be firstly safe and then happy - then it was worth it.

Phineas Four stared at her, and her eyes and thoughts were so foggy she could barely perceive his face at all, let alone read what it contained pertaining to his own thoughts and feelings. Her eyes drifted lazily out of focus, blurring the world into a large mish-mash of color and light.

She blinked several times, trying to force it back into focus. The spots in her vision were so bad now, accompanied by random bright flashes of light, as if someone was popping a flashbang in her face. She clung to whatever was in her hand desperately, using it as an anchor in the swirling surroundings. Whatever was happening - she was sure Doofenshmirtz was behind it.

And deep down, she _knew_ what else was playing a role in it. But her own physical needs were not something she was willing to fulfil at such a cost to her predominant goal in life. The idea that her own body might rebel against her and _force_ such a thing was… not a good one. To think, after all this time, she might fail because she was so _weak_. This was hour she was needed most by the only people that mattered in the world. She could not, and would not fail.

It was simply not an option. No matter the cost, it was a bill she was willing to shoulder, a bill she was willing to pay, no matter how dearly she would have to do so.

"That's… good." Phineas Four sighed and nodded. "I don't suppose I'll be able to change your mind any farther at any rate."

"No." On _this_ , she was resolute. She'd already done this much for him - she would go no farther. He may have looked like and reminded her of her own little brother, but the similarity ended there, and _that_ was a fact that she was never going to lose sight of. She'd bent this much, but her generosity towards him extended no more.

"Fair enough." He reached out and grabbed ahold of some brown thing - oh, wait - a chair and pulled it close. "Why don't you sit down here for now? I mean, even when there's just you, you know, _guarding_ … there's no reason you have to _stand_ , is there?"

"Re-re-re-reaction time," she replied, shaking her head. "No." She swallowed hard and leaned harder into the pole in her hand. "No."

"Two, I…" he took a deep breath. "...alright. I'll go get ahold of her cell. Give me a little bit."

Well, there you had it. He was learning too - learning that there were some subjects on which she was not to be be pushed, some subjects on which she would not sway. It was a lesson that her own brothers had learned long ago as well. And it was the way it should be, after all. She was (and had been for basically ever by now) in charge.

It was what she did. It was who she was.

And if Doofenshmirtz wanted to get to her brothers, he would have to do it over top of her dead body.

...that would probably not be something he would be opposed to arranging, either, but it was nonetheless true.

But the conversation was over now, and her decision had been made. There was no further benefit to be had in more thought on matter. The book had been closed, the matter sealed. It was done.

Instead, she stood guard, the way she'd been meant to do this whole time. She could sort-of hear Phineas Four talking in the far corner of the basement. Presumably to Isabella Four, unless he wasn't. She simply couldn't make herself understand him from so far away over the buzzing and ringing in her ears.

She took several deep breaths - some of which were more like yawns - and tried to force herself to stabilize. Her heart was beating rapidly and almost irregularly, scrambling to fuel her body with whatever scraps were left behind _to_ fuel it with.

Almost without thinking her breaths turned rapid and shallow, and keeping them from _not_ being like that required a constant conscious effort - effort that only increased her raging headache, multiplying the pressure behind her eyes.

One thing was good: her brothers were not around to see this.

She tried to look at the clock on the wall, but failed, after the digits simply swam around too much for her to comprehend them. Perhaps it was for the best, even. Just stand here, in the middle of the basement. Focus on keeping the rhythm of her breaths as steady as possible, and keep both her eyes peeled for any sign, no matter how fleeting, of Doofenshmirtz.

He was going to come back, she _knew_ it. It was just a matter of _when_ , really, and whenever that should happen to be, she would be… would be… would…

…

There was a sudden popping noise, not too far from the sound of a balloon coming too close to a needle. Candace Two jerked her head up, for a moment confused. It was only for a moment, though - the briefest of moments, even - before she was able to collect her jumbled thoughts and straighten them back out again.

Well, as straight as they were ever going to be. Her eyes were burning again, and she had to almost consciously focus on the action of blinking to undertake it. It didn't help that much, honesty.

She couldn't really… exactly feel her legs. They were there, as she confirmed by looking down at them, but there a sneaking thought in the back of her head that they weren't really _hers_. She was cold, so badly so, but did not shiver. There was simply not enough energy left to waste on such things. She needed to relieve herself, and it took conscious concentration to force her body to suck it up and hold it. Her vision was swimming and her heart was beating rapidly and irregularly. Her joints were stiff and did not want to move, despite how much her senses dully reported that the floor was rocking back and forth as if she was on a boat.

None of that was important. Stand guard. Be prepared. Repel attacks. Well, it was unlikely that she alone would be able to repel an attack led by Doofenshmirtz. But she could - and _would_ \- hold it back long enough for Phineas Four to collect the things most important getting her home, and then for her and him to escape unnoticed while the NORMbots destroyed everything and everyone else.

It wouldn't be pretty, but it would be survivable for Phineas Four, and that was what mattered. They would run, together, into hiding. And while the NORMbots ransacked the town hunting for them, he would finish his gadget to get her home. He would open a portal, and she would be home. And he… well, beyond that point, she simply didn't care. Her _own_ brothers would take up the full amount of her concentration and focus then. Phineas Four would… not even be an afterthought.

That was the way of the world. It was cruel and unforgiving, things that Candace Two had taken upon herself as well. If she was to _prevent_ her brothers from turning into herself, then she would have to bear the full brunt of the load alone.

It was not something she grudged doing.

She jerked back a sudden sound that played like a megaphone into her ears, her knees wobbling unsteadily beneath her. It was the stairwell door, as it opened. How much time _had_ passed with her staring off unseeing into the void that was all around her?

Gripping her staff firmly, she readied herself for a fight, no matter what or who should come through that door. She was just about to shout a warning for Phineas Four, wherever he should happen to be, when it opened fully.

"Hey," Phineas Four announced, suddenly appearing at her side with such unexpectedness that she nearly brained him again. "Do _not_ do that," she hissed. How come _he_ , of all people, could manage to sneak around so softly on his feet that she could not hear him? It was a feat that no one had ever managed before this time, although she _had_ occasionally pretended so with her _own_ brothers. (There was nothing more satisfying in the world than seeing them happy because they thought they had managed to surprise her with something. Like those eggplants Phineas had been so proud of growing that one year, even despite the extremely infertile soil that now covered most of the Tri-State Area. She didn't even _like_ eggplants - hated them with a passion, even. Except that year.)

There was a woman in the door. It was… not a Candace. That was almost immediately evident, even to Candace Two's struggling thought processes. She was far shorter than Two (though Two had almost half an inch on the next tallest Candace, which might have affected things somewhat in that regard.) Her head was flat as a pancake on top and was covered with long, dark hair.

Candace Two blinked rapidly, willing herself to focus as hard as she could. It was - it was Isabella. Garcia-Shapiro - but not the one she knew, no, this was Garcia-Shapiro _Four_. The one that Phineas Four had brought in to relieve her of duty temporarily. _If_ , of course, and _only_ if, she proved to be sufficiently like Garcia-Shapiro Two. It wasn't something that Candace Two particularly believed was going to happen, but she'd made up her mind, and that was that.

"I'm glad you could make it," Phineas Four said.

"Mmm hmm?" Isabella Four shrugged slightly. "I'm sorry it took me so many hours after you called, but I had a lot of stuff to take care of and you said that…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he spoke up again, cutting her off. "At any rate - come meet Candace Two. Two - Two, are you there?"

"I'm here," Candace Two growled.

He nodded. "Candace Two, Isabella. Isabella, Candace Two. I… don't believe you've met before?"

"I… don't believe we've had the pleasure?" Isabella Four hesitated slightly as she extended her hand.

The hesitation was not lost on Candace Two. She knew what she was looking for, and she knew what she was _not_ looking for. So far, it wasn't looking good, either. But she wasn't going to jump conclusions. _That_ left you dead at the end of the day.

She lifted her staff and used the end of it to push Isabella Four's hand away. " _I'll_ be the judge of that."

Isabella Four glanced at Phineas Four and something uninterpretable passed between them.

"Alright," Candace Two said slowly. "I've been told that you consider yourself capable of standing guard without my immediate presence." She leaned down and glared as hard as she was able. Which probably wasn't _terribly_ hard, given how much her eyes were burning, but whatever. She reached up and peered over the top of her sunglasses lenses for a brief moment.

It was _probably_ a mistake, granted, given that the unfiltered light from the harsh bulbs in the basement felt like hot lava on her eyes, but it had been necessary. And given by the small gasp and subsequent widening of Isabella Four's own eyes, the intended effect had been had.

"You - your eyes," she said. "They're so…"

"I do not _care_." Candace Two tapped her staff on the top of her foot several times. "So you believe yourself adequate for this?"

"I… guess so?" Isabella Four seemed unsure of herself for a moment, but she cleared her throat and collected herself slightly better. "I mean… how hard it be? I'd just be, uh, 'standing watch', right?" She looked at Phineas Four again, as if waiting for approval or something of the sort.

"Standing watch is not even the _half_ of it," Candace Two said coldly. "You have to be prepared to deal with what you're watching _for_." She paused for half a second, willing herself to enunciate at least _this_ word clearly. "The NORMbots."

Isabella Four frowned. "Are those the… I mean, yeah…" She stopped awkwardly. "The robots from a long time ago?"

Candace Two snorted. "To you, maybe."

"I mean… didn't they all blow up? I was… pretty sure they did?"

"Yes…" Two drawled. "Because they _all_ blew up, and that explosion coincidentally happened to destroy every single manufacturing plant in the entire Tri-State Area. And it _also_ somehow blew up the knowledge on how to make more in Doofenshmirtz's brain. Quite lucky, really."

"Oh, well, yeah, I guess."

"You _guess_ ," Two said scornfully. "I don't care what you have to _guess_. I care what you _know_. And that's why I'm asking: do you have what it will take?"

"I… sure." She shrugged slightly and took a single step back. "I mean, I - we took out a ton of them as kids, right? How hard can it be?"

"Exactly." Candace Two's mouth had formed a thin line. "How hard can it be? It's certainly safe to be cocky about it." She leaned into her staff for a moment, collecting her breath. "Would you be willing to die?"

"Excuse me?"

"Did I stutter, soldier?"

"Well, a little- I mean, no." Isabella Four shifted back and forth between her two feet. "I understood you, I - it's just an odd question, is all."

"It's not 'odd' at all," Two responded blithely. "Yes, or no. If it comes to it, would you - _without hesitation_ \- sack your life for theirs?"

Isabella leaned farther back, and Two leaned farther forwards. Say what you like about how much she was struggling to maintain her balance and could barely see straight, the intimidation tactics were hardly failing her now. It was something she was very good at - to the point of nearly being able to do it in her sleep. Or lack of it.

"I mean, I - I… yeah, I'd think so?" Isabella said. "I - it's not like I've never put my life in _danger_ for (and sometimes _with_ ) them. I mean… once I faced down this alien, like, mega criminal overlord guy, all by myself. Admittedly, he was like, what, a foot tall? But he was also capable of shooting death rays from his mouth, so I… like to think it would count."

"Mmm." The random babble was not helping this case very much, that was for sure.

"It's true," Phineas Four broke in from somewhere. She couldn't tell where exactly he was by the sound of his voice other than assuming 'somewhere in the general vicinity', which was… hopefully accurate enough? "She's right. And there's other things too, I mean - the time we _did_ fight those robots should be proof enough, right? And that wasn't the only time we fought robots, too, and we moved the Earth and fended off a takeover of mindless repulsive pharmacists." He nodded vigorously. "Please, you can trust me on this one. _I_ would trust her with my life. You can too, I promise."

"Mmm." Well, he was being sincere, at least. Not that that necessarily stood for much… it was just as easy to be sincerely _wrong_ as anything else, after all. Still, even _if_ Isabella Four was that willing, even that alone wasn't enough. Being willing to lay down your life for something was worthless if the first slight breeze that came along was enough to knock it out of your hands anyway.

"Sssssho, tell me," she said, after a long pause. "How _capable_ are you?"

"Capable?"

"Yes, capable." Two frowned even more. "You two say that you've done all these things - you say that you're able to defend them from these things. Now, prove it."

"Prove it?" Isabella echoed, looking more confused by the second. "Uh… I mean, how, exactly?"

Candace Two straightened to her full height, exhaling deeply and collecting up every last scrap of energy that was in her body. "I'm right here."

"Excuse me?"

"I said, 'I'm right here'," Two repeated coolly. "I'm right here and in about two seconds I'm going to turn around and kill Phineas Four. Stop me." She paused. "One."

"What? You can't be - Phineas, she can't be serious, right?" Isabella Four's face was covered in the marks of disbelief.

"Two." Candace Two exhaled and shrugged. "He's dead - you've failed." She turned on her heel, towards Phineas Four. " _Goodbye_."

"No, no, wait," Phineas Four exclaimed. He grabbed ahold of her arm. "Isabella, just - it's alright, okay? Two, you can't just walk off. You _need_ this rest, and you know it, I know. My sister is not stupid."

Candace Two shrugged again. "I'll live."

"Yes, but only just barely!" he exclaimed. "Come on, Two, _please_. She'll do it - just do it this once more, okay?" He hesitated. "I'll tell you what: if you do this for me, and she still doesn't make it, I'll promise to _never_ bring this up again. Is that - is that fair?"

"Never again, hmm?" Candace Two frowned slightly. He nodded - _very_ slowly, but a nod even despite that. She looked down at him and stared hard into his eyes. Well… ah, whatever. What would happen if she let Isabella Four try again? She would fail again, no doubt, and then Phineas Four would cease bothering her about her habits?

...fine, then.

She turned back to Isabella Four, narrowing her eyes. "You have _one_ second this time, do you understand?"

"I… think?" She hesitated. "Wait, Phineas, what-"

"Just, I don't know, do something!" he exclaimed. "It'll be okay - I'll owe you favor or something, alright?"

"Oh, fine, whatever. This had _better_ not be…" her voice trailed away into intelligible mumbles, but she took a single small step forwards and gingerly set her (extremely warm) hand on Candace Two's shoulder. "Stop?"

For a split second, Candace Two just _stared_. Seriously? , it was technically an attempt. Then she didn't have to think any more. The force of long, long, _long_ established and practiced habit took over, guiding her limbs with scarcely a conscious thought, moving at a pace so quickly that her mind could not keep up.

Another split second passed, and by the time Candace Two had managed to let her mind catch up and slowly, haltingly, process what had happened, Isabella Four was lying face-up on the carpeted floor, with the end of Two's staff firmly pinned atop her chest.

"Oh….ow. That… that hurt." she winced, panting heavily, but not yet making a move to get up.

"And now," Two finished coldly. "You are both dead." She moved her staff and watched as Isabella Four grabbed onto a nearby chair and pulled herself up, plopping down into it.

"What was _that_ for?" the woman exclaimed. "Seriously?"

Phineas Four sighed. "I… am sorry."

"What do you mean?" Candace Two replied, one of the corners of her mouth turning ever-so-slightly upwards. "You _wanted_ to try to take over for me." She shrugged at the glare Isabella Four sent in her direction. Phineas Four turned to her, but before he could say anything, she continued. "And I - I think you're… mediocre. But adequate."

"Candace Two-" Phineas Four started, before halting again. "Wait, what?"

Two shrugged again. "I saw the move she tried to use to avoid being flipped. I felt it."

"Well, it certainly didn't _work_ ," Isabella groaned.

"No, of course not," Candace Two replied. "But it was an expert move nonetheless, and you executed it perfectly. It was only because I am objectively skilled and you are not that I won. Your technique, however, was flawless."

Isabella Four winced again, adjusting herself in the chair. "Thanks? I guess?"

"So, wait, what exactly does this mean, then?" Phineas Four asked. "Are you…"

Candace Two sighed. "I will… rest, yes." She turned and glared at Phineas Four. "Under _these_ conditions, and these conditions _alone_." She held her hand and ticked them off her fingers as she spoke. "One: anything happens? You wake me. I will already be awake, but you _wake me_. Understand?" He nodded. "Two: Isabella Four is _not_ to let you out of her sight for one _second_. If you leave to climb the stairs, she is to be there. If you go and eat, she is to be there. If you go to use the toilet, she is to be there. If you go to sleep, she is to be there. Understand?" Candace Two glanced back at Isabella Four this time. "Understand?" Isabella looked at Phineas Four, but sighed again and eventually nodded. "Three: if you should fail in this, it had better be because you were killed. If it was not, you will have been when I am done with you. Understand?" This time, Isabella raised her eyebrows slightly, but nodded a second time. "Very good then. I suppose we understand each other."

She stopped and gasped for breath, suddenly winded. All this talking was _exhausting_ , and it required a near-superhuman level of focus and concentration.

"Candace…" Phineas Four started.

"I am _going_ ," she snapped. "Hold your horses."

So… she was doing this, then? Going to rest, at some time in the afternoon (she guessed?), and leaving Phineas Four's wellbeing in the hands of another? There was no doubt in Isabella Four's skills at least so far as self-defense was concerned,any more. Phineas Four had sworn that she'd proven herself willing to endure life-threatening situations for his benefit before. Of course, he _could_ in theory be lying, but… even she found that hard to believe. For all his differences from her own brother, Phineas Four was still a _little_ bit the same… enough for her to look into his eyes and see pure guileless artlessness within them.

Fair enough. She'd made a promise, and it was time to hold up her end of the deal. So, she would, then. There was a couch pushed up against one wall of the basement, and she painstakingly made her way over towards it. Once there, she hesitated slightly.

"Wait, there?" Phineas Four said from somewhere behind her, his voice muffled and hollow.

"Do _not_ test me," she retorted. "I'm doing this much, no?"

She inhaled deeply, and let herself down onto the cushion. First sitting, then pulling her legs up onto it and lying back flat. She straightened her sunglasses, pushing them farther up the bridge of her nose so they would not fall off, and then closed her eyes.

The pounding headache was going to make this difficult, for sure. As was the fact that she really was _not_ tired or sleepy, in any way. Nevertheless, she remained still, focusing on trying to stabilize her breathing and regulate her palpitating heartbeat. Perhaps she would have to lay here for hours, awake, to convince Phineas Four to rest his case. That would be acceptable too.

She heard something, but couldn't identify the sound at all, or even describe it, beyond somehow _knowing_ it had been there. How long _would_ she have to lay here, waiting… waiting… waiting?

Perhaps… perhaps… perhaps…

Perhaps not that long at all.

…


	34. Shopping Lists

"It is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

That was a phrase that Candace Six was no stranger to, really. She'd said so about a good-sized handful of planets before - like Aargau or Byss or whatever. Really, after so many years living there, she didn't think anyplace other than Coruscant could feel like home to her anymore. She'd moved there with Phineas just weeks after their wedding, and they'd settled down and made it their home. That was the place their children had been born and raised. And though they had vacationed together all over the galaxy, it was the place they always returned.

And it was the same way here. Candace Six wouldn't have described Candace Four's planet as 'unpleasant'. Well, not if she was thinking straight, she wouldn't. Despite what Phineas would probably say, it was a nicer place than, say, Tatooine.

That did not mean that she would have wanted to live here. The place was positively backwards in more ways than one, and she was all alone in a sea of people, which was perhaps the worst kind of loneliness. She'd kind of hoped that she would be able to relate to Three and Four more than she had, but although those two seemed to be fine in talking to each other , Six just felt… somewhat like an outcast.

And she knew it was most likely not being done on purpose, of course. Her universe was just so different from any of the ones she'd heard described by the other versions of herself. The one she'd ended up relating to the most had been Kevin, and even that link was… tenuous, at best.

To top matters off, she couldn't even amuse herself with reading, as the other Candaces seemed to do a fair amount, because everything here was written in an entirely different alphabet system. Sure, let's speak Basic but not write in Aurebesh. Because that's totally reasonable.

Whatever.

It certainly was a pain, though, and left her with just about nothing at all to do. Nothing but to sit here on the roof of Phineas Four's spacescraper and stare mostly unseeingly at the scene stretched out below. You could see the ground, from even the tops of the tallest buildings. That was different from Coruscant. There was, apparently, one moon. That was different. There were large stretches of land in which you could find absolutely nothing and no one . That was different.

Honestly, she could probably have sat here all day listing off thing after thing that was different, and never run out. But she was bored, and with no possible to relieve that, said boredom was rapidly turning itself into hunger.

Boredom eating! It was not something Candace Six had dealt with that much. In her life as a stormtrooper, although her meals had been free, they had been rationed out. And in her life now , her four children running about rarely left a moment for her to feel bored in. Really, it was the way she liked it. Her life was frantic, crowded, loud, sometimes tiring, and often spontaneous. And sometimes it was the children who were the cause of that, and sometimes it was herself.

But she really didn't care all that much. That was was way she loved it.

Except for this turn it had taken over the past handful of days. She really could have done without this one.

With a slight sigh, she pushed herself off the chair and stood up. There would be food in the basement still. She would eat. At least there was something to do, right?

First, climb down from the roof. Then, follow the hallway to the stairwell door - the one with the large plaque on it, though Six herself couldn't read it - and from there descend the flights of stairs into the basement, aaaall the way to the basement. It wasn't a terribly tall building (indeed, quite the opposite, actually, compared to some of the ones she was used to from Coruscant), and there weren't that many stairs, but it was still a bit of an annoyance.

Still, she got there soon enough despite that. The basement door squeaked softly as she pushed it and stepped inside the basement, it's open carpeted floorplan striking a noticeable contrast to the cold duracrete interior of the stairwell. It was warm in here, perhaps just a teensy touch too warm? The far wall of the room, where the carpet changed back into hard flooring, where the room turned into the laboratory that Other Phineas had down here. She didn't know what half of the science-y gadgets over there did, really. But so long as someone did, then it was all fine by her, really.

Phineas Four half-waved to her as she entered, apparently engrossed in some conversation with Candace Four. Well, Six assumed it was Four - and she was pretty confident in that assumption - but there was still technically the possibility that it could be… any of them, really. Aside from One, the little girl. (Obviously.)

She'd just crossed the room towards the little refrigeration unit when she got close enough to that part of the room to begin overhearing some of the conversation. It sounded… fairly dull? to be honest.

"...we going after again?" That was Four.

"Two things." Oh, hey, there was another Candace over there as well. By now, Six was more than close enough to read her number off the tag stuck to her shirt. It was Three. "We're going to be running trial runs with this miniature model of the extradimensional console here and it's going to be loud."

"Exactly." Now Phineas Four was speaking again. "And you know we can get a boatload of great sound absorbing panels for cheap from the Googolplex."

"And I wanted to get them delivered - you know, seven-minute-delivery guarantee - but -"

"But somebody ought to check up on One and it's not an urgent need so this way kills two birds with one stone." Four sighed. "Got it. Off to the Googolplex with me, I guess."

"It shouldn't take that long," Three said. "If you want, I can come with you to help find the right stuff faster while Phineas gets things rolling here."

"I'm fairly sure I know what to get," Four deadpanned. She hesitated for a second. "But many hands do make light work, I guess."

"And I really need to get some sun." Three gestured down at herself and rolled her eyes. "Or else I'll probably turn into a vampire before we get done here."

"While I doubt that ," Phineas Four cut in, "It would probably be healthy nonetheless." He smiled slightly and waved his hands in the air. "Don't worry - we'll be fine without you for a little while. Shoo! Be gone!"

Candace Three pushed back her chair and stood up, stretching. "To the Googolplex, then?"

"Alright," Four relented. "I guess it sounds like what we're doing anyway."

By now, Candace Six was thoroughly curious. As Three and Four walked past her, she reached out and stopped them for a second. "What's a 'googolplex' and why are you going there?"

Was it some sort of other planet? Possibly, although the things she'd heard of Four's planet's spacefaring capabilities were very conflicting and often contradictory. On one hand, everything around seemed so backwards - and there weren't even real spaceports. On the other hand… 'Martians' ? None of it really made any sense to Candace Six.

Three and Four glanced at each other for a second, then Four spoke up. "It's… a shopping mall?"

"Shopping mall?" Candace Six was silent for a moment, trying to parse this information. (Kevin was actually kind of good at this sort of thing, now that she thought about it.) Well, 'mall' she didn't know, but the other part… "Like Shoppingland?"

"Shopping land ?" Three seemed confused.

"You know, the place on Lianna? The place with the-" she paused for a second. "Oh, wait, I guess you wouldn't know."

"No, we wouldn't," Four replied. "Though I can probably guess as to what it is anyway." She shrugged. "You can come if you want, I guess."

"Well…" Candace Six hesitated. Why was she hesitating? It wasn't like she had anything else to do - anything except boredom binge eat, which was… probably not a good thing to do. She didn't want to go home fifty pounds heavier, after all. "Oh, alright. I suppose there's nothing better to do. I mean, I'm sure it won't be as big as Shoppingland but… eh. Everything here is… tiny. Well, small, at least." It did seem to be a rule, didn't it?

"Indeed," Three said dryly, shrugging. "If we're going to go, though, we'd probably better get gone while the getting's good."

"Which probably won't be terribly much longer," Four interjected. "Judging by the weather forecast, at least. Come on." She waved the others after her and set off towards the stairwell door.

"The 500 Republica is so big that it creates its own weather patterns near the peak." Candace Six wasn't quite sure why she thought it necessary to shoehorn the random fact into the conversation. Candaces Three and Four wouldn't even know what she was talking about, at any rate. It wasn't like she had to justify herself in some way.

Well, it would be nice to be able to start up a conversation - a conversation that actually went somewhere, you know, rather than fizzling out like the ones she'd had with Kevin or starting an argument, like yesterday with Candaces Five and Seven. It was… probably partly her fault, too, after all - it was really hard to initiate a conversation when the extent that she related to most of the other Candaces - to Three and Four now - was that they and their families shared the same faces and names. Other than that, there really wasn't much to go on.

Three and Four, as far as Candace Six could see, were a lot the same. Of course, there were some differences, some superficial (like, uh, Three appearing to be just a bit taller than Four?) and some more… deeply rooted? Like the fact that Three could invent things like Phineas and Ferb could, which Four could not. (Nor could Six herself, for that matter.) Still, even despite all the things like that, those differences still seemed to pale in comparison to the vast divide between them and herself.

So Candace Six was mostly silent as she trudged up the stairs behind Three and Four, idly listening to them chatter back and forth, mostly about Four's kids. Which, in a twist that might have once seemed strange, also shared faces and names with Three's children. (At least, Six guessed they would.)

Four's kids, Xavier and Amanda, did not, however, seem to strike any particularly strong resemblance to Candace Six's own, for whatever reason that would be. The one thing (beyond looking basically alike) that she had in common with them was in who she'd married. Of course, Three and Four hadn't actually married at all - they hadn't been able to.

Which was, she supposed, an interesting thought in its own right, though hardly one she'd not explored already. Three and Four had come to the same conclusion - that they preferred their own experience of growing up alongside Phineas to the idea of being separated from him practically at birth, even if that later meant they could publicly and officially marry.

It was something that Candace Six thought she would have perhaps liked? She felt she couldn't really decide for sure. On one hand, she'd missed so many potential years with him, and missed them for what? Serving the Empire? Yech.

Still… the way things had worked out was perfect now, just the way it was, with her spotty backstory and all. And she wouldn't have wanted any of that to change. That seemed something like the approach Phineas might take to tackle this problem. After all, you cannot change the past. And even if you could , you would also be changing the present. And if you don't want to change the present, it's probably better to leave the past be, no?

Hmm. It did seem like something he might say. Eh, it was good enough for her anyway. She didn't want to get bogged down in melancholy by wondering what she might have missed had she been Phineas' sister. She wasn't that - and couldn't be, anymore. But she was his wife, and that was plenty good enough for her. She was satisfied.

Stepping out behind Three and Four into the groundcar parking zone momentarily made her raise her eyebrows in mild surprise. The last time she'd seen the sky those few minutes ago on the roof, it had been bright and blue, dotted with patchy clouds here and there.

Now, though, the wind appeared to have picked up. The patchy clouds from earlier had clotted together, covering most of the sky with a lowering grayness that choked out the sunlight as the surprisingly chill wind whistled across the duracrete.

Figures that there wouldn't be weather control on this planet either , Candace Six thought. After all, on Coruscant, the rain was never allowed to fall until after sundown, which was quite convenient. It would not be the same here, though. Of course it wouldn't - everything was bigger, fancier, and put quite simply, better at the place she called home.

"Hurry up," Candace Four urged, motioning towards her groundcar, which was sitting just a few feet away by now. "We wanna get this done before the weather gets nasty."

Candace Six nodded silently and complied, clambering into the backseat of the groundcar and strapping herself down with the acceleration strap.

"And we're off," Three commented, as Four turned the groundcar on and began driving, slowly at first. "To the Googolplex." She turned slightly in her seat until she was facing Six. "It is a pretty nice place. I used to spend a ton of time here as a kid. Well, not here , specifically, but the Googolplex in my dimension. Which I'm assuming is mostly the same as the one here? But I guess I can't know for sure. Either way, it's a big place. You might get lost, even - just keep an eye out for the information booths if you do. If this place is anything like my own, you can't miss them."

"No, you certainly can't," Four chuckled. "Though getting lost in the Googolplex is hardly a real concern. At least there you can just keep walking in one direction and you'll eventually find an exit."

"Yes, well, I don't think the Superstore counts," Three replied. "That is what you're talking about? I mean, does anyone go in there without a map and a GPS and emergency survival rations?"

Four snorted, as if something was funny. "That's a good one. I mean, I've lived here all my life and I still haven't seen it all."

Candace Six frowned. "What's so funny? I… don't get it." It was probably just something else that was commonplace here in Four's universe. And Three's by extension, and One's and Five's and… yeah. As far as she understood, only she and Kevin and Two lived in universes vastly different from the other.

"It's… a joke," Three said, after a moment of awkward silence. "You know, because the Superstore is massive?" She gestured with her hands. "Like massively massive."

"Fifty-two million, six hundred and thirty-seven thousand square acres of unbridled commercialism under one roof massive," Four added. "If you get that jingle stuck in your head, you will never get it out. Trust me on this one."

"Ah. I… see." Candace Six hesitated again, somewhat like an extremely obvious joke was flying straight over her head. "Very… funny."

"Oh, that's right," Four said. "You probably have no idea what we're talking about, do you?" She made a face in the groundcar's rearview mirror. "Sorry, my bad. I forget that your dimension is, like, shockingly different. Well, I knew , of course, but I wasn't really thinking of it?"

"Most of the dimensions the different us-es hail from are mostly the same," Three chimed in. "Even Two's, surprisingly enough, from what Four tells me."

"Yes, I - I am aware of that," Six replied, feeling slightly inclined to roll her eyes. Phineas would probably know what to say here to bride this awkward gap. Heck, Kevin would probably know what to say. Six really should've tried to get Kevin to come too, shouldn't she?

"You've totally got to see the Superstore, though," Three continued. "I mean, you can't leave here without having seen it, right? It's like the one reason people visit Danville at all, aside from the grass, the milk, and the smiles."

"And the terrible Tourist Board's idea of a good advertisement," Four added.

Three raised her eyebrows slightly. "That too." She half-turned in her seat until she was facing Four. "We should go get the sound-insulation from the Superstore instead of the Googolplex. That way Six can see it at least once before we leave. At least she'll be interested in it, unlike Two."

"No, Two would probably just blame Poofenplotz somehow," Four snorted. "Because the sunrise and the tides are his fault - everyone knows that. But part of the reason we're going to the Googolplex at all is to make sure One's getting on okay by herself, remember?"

Candace Six frowned slightly. It seemed like Three and Four had forgotten all about her again. She could have probably helped the situation somewhat by trying harder to jam herself into the conversation - as Phineas probably would, she realized somewhat wistfully - but what exactly could she say to jam herself in there? What common ground did she have with Three and Four besides, you know, sharing a face?

...Phineas. Really, that was it, wasn't it? Everything else was just so different in the little bits and pieces she heard of Three's stories and saw all around in Four's universe. And even that was vastly different at its core.

"That's true," Three said thoughtfully. "But, I mean, come on - she's us , she's fifteen , and she's in a shopping mall . I think you know what she's going to be up to, and it's not going to be trouble."

"Fair enough," Four shrugged. "I mean, she does have that roadmap. If she wants to go back to F.F.I., she can find the way. And it has been a little while since I've been to the Superstore myself. I wonder if there're any sales going on?"

"I don't know, but now I'm glad your brother decided on picking up materials in person." Three turned back to face Six again, which was a gesture Six noted with somewhat of a sense of relief. "We're going to the Superstore, and let me tell you something, Six, you wanna talk about big buildings? Prepare to have your mind blown ."

"Well, I don't know about that…" Six answered modestly. "You called Four's brother's building 'big' and it really sort of… isn't."

"Just you wait and see, Six," Four said over her shoulder. "Just you wait and see. Really, no words describe it."

"'Eighty-two thousand, two hundred and forty-five square miles on six floors' does a pretty good job," Three remarked.

Only six floors? Candace Six had had her doubts before but now… yeah, she could see where this was going.

"Perhaps." Four nodded. "It's a neat place for more than just that, though - it's been around since Phineas and I and Ferb were just kids. We… (and by that I mostly mean 'I') didn't hang around there too too much because it was too far away to walk to, as opposed to the Googolplex - which is right over there, by the way." She pointed out the left hand window. "If you look quickly."

Six turned and leaned, craning her neck to see. What she saw was a maybe two story purple building topped with a transparent transparisteel dome. There was a handful of transparisteel doors gracing the front, underneath a glowing sign that said… something, in this unreadable gibberish of an alphabet system that apparently every universe except hers used.

So that was the 'Googolplex Mall', then? It was… well, garishly painted, for sure. And also not nearly as impressive as Three and Four had been selling it up to be. Still, she could be polite.

"It looks like a nice place."

Three and Four nodded almost simultaneously.

"It is," Three said. "You don't want to know how much time I've probably spent there over the course of my life."

"Well, to be fair - if I'm thinking what you're thinking, then it was for a good reason, at least?" Four asked.

"You bet your rear it was." Three chuckled and drummed her fingers on the groundcar's dashboard. "Ah, those were the days."

Oh, great , Candace Six realized. They're about to start reminiscing about their childhoods .

It was something Phineas occasionally did, often when weaving some tale of his adventures on Tatooine to the children, somehow making the desert planet sound more attractive than any paradise ever could. And while it had never really bothered her before, now the thought of it… didn't sit quite as well with her.

Her childhood was certainly not something to reminisce about - it certainly wasn't a part of what you might call 'the good old days'. And although before this whole insane week had begun, that hadn't been terribly bothersome either. As far as she was concerned, Phineas was her husband, she was his wife, and that was all there was to it. Sure, there was technically a blood tie there, but for all the difference it made? It may as well have not been there at all.

The only real difference it had made was that Phineas had ceased to talk about his missing sister after they discovered her lineage. Which she reallykind of appreciated, given that she was pretty sure she'd had no choice in the matter at all. And Phineas himself had said he found it difficult, if not impossible, to see her as a sibling anyway. Which was pretty much the same way she felt about him, and the subject had been dropped, presumably for good.

...although not quite , perhaps, because once again those old sneaking worries had been awakened in her mind. Would Phineas like to have her as sister? He'd never said so, but of course he wouldn't say something like that because he would know how awkward and difficult it would be for her. And she really shouldn't be doubting this at this phase in their marriage and yet… here she was.

Ugh. She really shouldn't be doing this. Would Phineas be dredging up old memories for seemingly no other reason than to make himself feel bad? No, of course he wouldn't. And Candace Six trusted him - more than anyone or anything else in the universe. They'd put these worries to rest a long, long time ago, and at rest was where they were going to stay. At least until she was back home, where she'd have him there to help her deal with it.

For now, she really ought to focus on trying to shove herself into the conversation between Three and Four. She may not have had much common ground with the other two women in the groundcar, but there was some there. She just had to figure out how to take advantage of it, was all.

"So," she suddenly spoke up. "What… are you guys talking about?" Oh, no, that was… not the way to do this, was it? She barely resisted the urge to facepalm. Why was this so hard ? Phineas never had any issues with striking up lively conversations, even with complete strangers. She just needed to do what he would do. Well, that'd pretty much been her goal for most of her life anyway, so it oughtn't be that hard, right?

Four glanced at her in the groundcar's rearview mirror again. "N - nothing?"

"Oh." She laughed self-consciously for a second. "Well… did you want to talk about, uh, something? How long is going to take us to get to the - the -"

"The Superstore." Three supplied the missing word.

"-yes, to the there. The Superstore."

"Well, it is a bit of a drive," Four said slowly. "Maybe an hour? Of course, that's if traffic isn't too bad. And it is Saturday, mind you, so it might take longer because of that. But don't worry - it'll be worth it."

"You know, I hadn't really thought of that," Three remarked. "Because it is kind of a drive, isn't it? I'd forgotten about that, I mean, the hoverjet at home makes the jump in four minutes. I haven't driven somewhere in a normal car in… a while, actually."

"Oh, this isn't any normal car," Four snorted. "Phineas's got some sort of fancy upgraded engine in it that… well, I can't say for sure what all it does. But I've never had to get gas, not even once. So it's pretty obvious from just that, no? I don't know if it does anything else - if it does, I either haven't noticed or it hasn't had a chance to do it? He did tell me about an emergency aviation system built in if I should happen to drive off a cliff. You know, all the cliffs in Danville."

"Emergency aviation system? That sounds nifty." Three tilted her head slightly. "You know, we could probably build a roller coaster track from here to the Superstore and be there faster than we could drive there. The interstate is a nightmare on the weekends."

It was at this juncture Six decided she had been silent for too long. "You know, all these groundcars really seem like they clog up the thoroughfares, don't they? That… must be annoying, right? Like, if you want to get somewhere, you can't just fly ." She refrained from adding ' like you would on Coruscant ', deeming it probably better for her attempts at relating to people if she didn't just keep constantly bringing up her home planet.

"That is quite true - it's why we use the hoverjet at home," Three replied. "And they, actually…you know, that kinda gives me an idea. Well, sort of. It depends on what the… huh." She fell silent for a moment, before speaking up again. "Say, Four, would you mind terribly pulling over before we get onto the interstate?"

"For what?" Four echoed. "I mean, we're almost onto it already. The onramp is right up there." She gestured through the windscreen at some duracrete structure up near the horizon. So that was an interstate. Interesting.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Three said. "But come on, do me this favor - you can pull over right here. There's plenty of space right on this shoulder." She tapped on the groundcar's viewport. "Trust me on this one. Well, actually, I don't know what your brother has… but it should be enough, I mean, yeah."

Candace Four raised her eyebrows with a loud (and probably exaggerated) sigh, but still the wheel at the front, directing the groundcar to veer off the thoroughfare and into the dirt and grass by its side. "What is it, anyway? I thought I told you to go before we left."

"You're very funny," Three said dryly. "Just… hang on for a second." She pushed open the groundcar door and climbed out."This shouldn't take too long. Well… nah, just - hang on."

"What is she doing?" Six asked slowly.

Four tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and shrugged. "I don't have a clue. But she needs to hurry, or it's going to start raining and I don't want to be stuck on the interstate in a rainstorm."

There was a dull, heavy clunk from outside, that echoed for a second or two, hanging in the air, before dissipating away. Six looked through all the viewports on the sides and back of the groundcar, but Three was nowhere to be seen. Was that a bad thing? Four didn't seem particularly worried about it. Well, okay, then.

"So… have you ever been off-planet?" she asked, desperately trying some way to get a conversation started.

Four frowned. "Off the planet? Yeah, plenty of times. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just wondering." She hesitated. This was not how you started a conversation. Shoot. Okay, it was time to approach this from another angle, then. She may not be able to relate with Four over anything from her greater life, but there were the past three days, right? "So… do you think Phineas is ever going to figure out what's wrong with the turbolift? Or are we just going to keep using the stairs for ever and ever."

Four glanced out the viewports for a moment, then shifted slightly in her seat to face Six. The groundcar's trunk had been opened, obscuring the view out the rear, although some sort of whizzing-clicking-buzzing sound could be faintly heard coming through the wall. "You mean the elevator, right?" She rolled her eyes. "I really ought to remind him of that, yes. It would be much easier. Well, I guess on the other hand, none of us are going to be out-of-shape, right?"

"I… I don't suppose so, no."

"I guess it's just dealing with Two that's making it problematic," Four continued thoughtfully. "I swear, she got so lucky that it had to randomly break now, of all times.I mean, come on ."

"Why doesn't she like the turbolift - evator? What's wrong with it?" Six leaned forwards a bit, becoming slightly relieved. She was actually managingthis, it seemed, even if was a bit awkward.

"Oh, I don't know." Four threw her hands in the air and gestured about. "She has an issue with everything. I swear she wasn't this off-the-deep-end when I met her before. I guess time has not treated her kindly. Or Dinkleberg. Because he's always lurking around, don't you know."

"I was wondering about that," Six replied. "I asked her the other day and she told me this story about-"

All of the sudden, a loud pop ping noise burst through the air, startling her and causing her to lose her train of thought. Her hand instinctively jumped down to her hip, gripping the stock of her blaster.

"Oh, alright," Four muttered, undoing her own acceleration strap. "What is she doing out there? I swear, if-"

At just that moment, the other door to the groundcar opened again, and Three poked her head inside again. She wiped her hands on her shirt, leaving two dark, oily smears behind. "Alright, I'm done!" She chuckled for a second. "Boy, your brother likes to keep that oil under pressure, doesn't he? Whatever." She sat down and pulled the strap down around herself. "It's all good now , though. This is gonna be cool ."

Six grimaced slightly at the stench of motor oil that followed Three into the cabin, even though Three herself hardly seemed to notice it.

"Are you ready now?" Four asked. "What did you even do ?"

"Well, your brother did most of the work," Three replied. "All the stuff was already in there, I just had to tweak it a bit. Make it more accessible. Here, you'll see." She pointed at the grassy stretch of ground running along the paved thoroughfare. "Just start driving normally. Ease into it, nice and easy."

Four glanced at Six in the rearview mirror and shook her head slightly, but started up the groundcar's engine, and the vehicle began rolling slowly along the bumpy ground. "Can I get back onto the road now?"

"Roads?" Three replied. "Six was right, you know. Roads are boring . Where we're going, we don't need them - well, we do , but only for takeoff and landing. I… tried to install a VTOL system, but the skeleton of the car isn't strong enough to take that kind of stress. Don't worry, though, this is plenty of space." She paused, then held a little box covered with buttons and switches, with a little antenna jutting out of the top. "I got it now. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride."

The seat underneath Six began to vibrate slightly, and she turned around just in time to see the trunk open again of its own accord. A huge column of metal rose up out of it, latching into place. A second later, a high-pitched whining could be heard.

"Wait, is that remote control?" Four said. "Why did you-"

FWOOOOM .

As someone who'd made the jump to hyperspace many times, Six really should have been expecting this. Of course, she'd never made the jump in a groundcar , but then again, out of the corner of her eyes, she could out of the viewport - and judging by the ground rapidly dropping away, it wasn't exactly a ground car anymore either.

Still, at least she knew what to expect now . The irresistible force shoving her backwards into the seat, the view out the viewports whizzing by so quickly that everything below blurred together into a single continuous mass of brown and green and blue, the thrumming of the vehicle beneath her as the engine propelled it through space at incomprehensible speeds.

"What are you doing ?!" Four said breathlessly, her hands to still gripping the steering wheel. But that wasn't even what Six was worried about.

"You can't make the jump to hyperspace in an atmosphere !" she exclaimed. "That's impossible !" Well, mostly - it had been done before, but still.

"Can't go hypersonic?" Three returned. "I think you'll be surprised, I mean, look - we're already there ." She gestured to Four. "What's the speedometer say?"

"I don't - uh," Four shook her head rapidly. "Forty-five miles an hour. Wait, no, that says forty-five hundred miles. An hour."

"That's what I'm talking about," Three cheered. "Six times the speed of sound, baby. Hypersonic travel: achieved. Up, down, all around - over rocks and underground. Well, not those last two, but you get me."

The force nailing Six back into her seat had lessened now, letting her sit forwards slightly. "So we're not going to try and jump into hyperspace from here?"

"Don't need to," Three replied, fiddling with her remote control. "We'll be at the Superstore in a minute and a half as it is. I mean, we're traveling at six times the speed of sound. We'll literally be there before you can hear us arriving."

Six looked out the viewport at the ground below, watching the paved thoroughfare fall rapidly away beneath them, at a pace too quickly to focus on, really. It only looked like a long, blurry strip of grayish-black meshed into the greens and browns all around it.

"And we're here ," Three announced. "Brace for deceleration!"

Six sat back in her seat and let the acceleration strap retract all the way. She knew how this worked, even if they weren't in hyperspace. Which it was fairly obvious now, that they weren't, but it had sure seemed like they were trying to make the jump. In a groundcar. Well, a flying groundcar. (which was a bit of a contradiction in terms, really.)

A tremendous shudder shot through the groundcar, throwing Six forwards against the restraining strap. There was a popping, and the ground began rising towards them again, first slowly, then faster and faster.

"I'm going to pass control back off the remote now," Three said. "Four, you got this?"

"I, uh, yeah," Four grimaced and adjusted her hands on the steering wheel again. "I got it. I got this. I swear, if it hadn't been for Phineas, I would've have had a heart attack back there."

The massive rocket engine jutting from the back of the groundcar hummed and spluttered, folding up on itself and withdrawing back into the trunk, and a moment later, with a cacophonous screech and tumultuous jerking, the groundcar made contact with the ground again. The wheels squeaked and squealed, and swerved this way and that as Four spun the steering wheel like a madman, dodging other groundcars and holosigns and trees.

She slammed on the braking mechanism, and with a complaining whine and leaving behind puffs of smoke, the groundcar slid along the ground, coming to a stop directly in between two others, with not six inches of space in between it and the other groundcars.

Six breathed a slight sigh of relief even despite herself.

"Would you look at that," Four said proudly. "Parallel parking. Still got it. Even when coming down from Mach 6."

"Indeed you do." Three tossed the remote into the backseat and unstrapped herself. "Come on, guys. Let's check this place out ."

Candace Six followed her other selves' example, undoing the strap and climbing out of the groundcar. She went to shut the door and jerked her hand back after just brushing her fingertips against it. Ouch . That was hot. She could just as well push the door shut with her foot instead.

"Well, what do you think?" Four asked, gesturing behind her. "Pretty impressive, right?"

"Hmm?" Six turned to look at this much-hyped up building that Three and Four kept talking about. "Oh, that's…"

Well, it wasn't tiny , but it was… hardly as big as they had made it out to be. Which was fairly standard for Four's dimension by now, after all, they called like every building 'huge' when most of them were actually quite small. This one did reach up into the low-lying clouds that were blanketing the sky, but it was still not something she was particularly impressed by.

"Oh, that's just the front of it," Four continued. "You can't see it all from here. Come on, let's go inside, and then you'll see what we mean."

"Alright, then." It wasn't like she had anything better to do anyway, right? And she'd come all this way, and it certainly would be more interesting that sitting around at the spacescraper all day, again.

"Hey, look," Three remarked as they walked across the parking zone towards the buildings entrance. "Those kiddie rides are still here too. Are they ever going to get rid of those? I swear they've probably been here since the 1900s."

" I was here in the nineteen hundreds," Four replied. "Though I think at that time I was still too much of a kid for even the kiddie rides. Or something."

"Somebody ought to check the torque and adjust the valve compression on those things. They're probably falling apart by now. Bet you could poke them and they'd just fall apart."

Candace Six did poke one as they walked past, sort of disinterestedly. It moved slightly, but didn't fall apart. Nor had she really been expecting it to… but you never knew. This was another universe, after all, one that seemed to work entirely different to her own. So she was justified, okay? Okay?

Whatever.

She quickened her pace to catch back to Three and Four as they walked through the transparisteel doors, which slid open automatically to accommodate them.

"And welcome to the Super Duper Mega Superstore!" Four said, turning back to face her. "Largest supplier of everything in the Tri-State Area. I'm sure you'll note that from here, you literally cannot see the back wall."

Well, it was true, oddly enough. There was a wide open corridor that stretched on and on and on… and on… and on… until it faded into the horizon. Inside a building. Now that was something she'd not seen before.

"Pretty neat," she replied. And to be completely fair, it was pretty neat. And sizeable, if it didn't yet appear to be as large as it'd been said to be. But, yeah. Neat.

"We ought to walk around for a bit," Three said. "You'll realize just how big it is when you realize that you could spend all day walking around and never cross your own path even once." She made a face. "And we need the sound paneling. I guess I can grab that real quick. Hmm. Four, is the hardware section here in your dimension still to the left, like, Branch 12-B near the Extreme Watersports area?"

Four nodded. "It is. Guess the Store is as much of a cross-dimensional constant as anything else. It's probably too big to be changed much."

"Maybe." Three rolled her eyes. "I'll be right back. Meet you near the cash registers in a bit?"

"Sounds good." As soon as Three turned and walked away, Four turned to Six and gestured to her. "Come on, I'll show you around. What sounds neat to you?"

"Uh…" Six grimaced slightly. "I… don't know. Is there, uh, does this place have automixers? I'm a bit thirsty, I guess."

"If it exists, it's here, somewhere. Heck, it's probably here even if it doesn't ." Four replied with a chuckle. "What's an automixer anyway?"

Six's eyes widened slightly. "Oh, uh, it's this machine, right? And you press the button on it to tell it to which species you belong and then it gives you something to drink. Automatically. You know, auto mixer."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Four frowned. "Whatever. We'll just go to the Grocery aisle. There'll be plenty of stuff there. Come on, it's over here."

"Oh - okay, then." Six followed as Four turned on her heel and led the way off to wherever they were going. It was a good thing Four was here, for sure - Six would definitely have gotten lost if she was to try to wander off alone. She couldn't really see much from here, but it seemed like a place that would be possible.

From here she could see several large escalators going up and down, carrying people to the various floors, each of which seemed to stretch on endlessly to the horizon, just as the ground floor did. It really was kind of weird - seeing the horizon inside a building. She didn't get to see much of the horizon on Coruscant anyway, because the skyline was very jagged and broken up with so many spacescrapers everywhere, but she had seen enough of it to know that seeing it inside a building was unusual.

Well, there were plenty of unusual things about Four's universe already. What was one more?


	35. The More Things Change

For a few minutes, Six was silent as she followed Four through the maze of shelves and display stands and whatnot scattered about. The Store wasn't quiet , really - there was a background din of other people rushing hither and thither, and there was tinny canned music playing over some invisible speaker mounted somewhere. The entire atmosphere of the place was one of vast, cluttered space, and yet, despite the clutter and the crowds, oddly empty. The cavernous arching roof soared above even the tallest shelves, dwarfing the people beneath it, and the air was crisp and laden with the scent of a thousand different things mixed together into one big olfactorial hodgepodge.

"So…" Four spoke up, her voice coming so suddenly that it almost startled Six. "What's going - well, I know that already, I guess." She paused. "How... how are you holding up?"

Six shrugged. "Alright. Pretty good, considering the circumstances, I guess." Which was true enough in itself. She'd spent enough time thinking over that, after all. Especially since thinking was like the only thing she could do to entertain herself.

"I'm sure you're bored," Four replied. "You know, if you want, we could stop by the library and rent out some stuff to read or something."

"That's nice of you." Six held up her palms in resignation. "But it wouldn't do me any good. I can't read your language, remember?"

"True." Four tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I wish we had some way to get back in contact with Meap. I'm sure he'd let you borrow one of his translation mustaches. Hmm." She fell silent for a moment. "Well, in lieu of being able to do that, maybe we could get some audiobooks? Or movies, even. Maybe you'd like the Space Adventure quinvigintology?"

"Holofilms? I… guess." She shook her head. "Sorry - I'm not trying to be difficult, I promise."

"No, I get you." The other woman nodded knowingly. "Don't worry. I felt the same way when I was stuck in Five's dimension last year. The situation was… quite different, to be fair, but I still think I'm picking up what you're putting down."

She kind of… lost Four on the last sentence, but just decided to go with it anyway. She sighed. "Yeah, it makes sense to me. I just feel like I'm so… I don't know, what's a good word? Alien? Different? Weird?"

Four snorted. "Don't you start on that tack too."

Candace Six blinked, slightly confused. "It's - it's not like it's a bad thing," she hastily assured Four. She'd been over this, too, and was fully confident in that. "I mean, I love my life. I wouldn't change it for anything. It's just really… inconvenient for this specific situation. That's all."

"I see. Well, I can understand that, I suppose."

"I don't want to complain," Six said, already feeling like she was contradicting herself. "But, I mean, you guys at least can talk to each other? I try to start a conversation and no one else can follow me because everyone else's universe is just so different from mine. I can't even read here. And it really kinda sucks."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Four replied. "I'll be honest - it is kind of… difficult to know what you're talking about sometimes? No offense, of course, though you hopefully know that."

"I do." Six shrugged. "It's an awkward situation, kind of, because I look at what I see of your planet and your life and I know I prefer my own - no offense, of course - and I would never opt to change that. But then logic would dictate that I shouldn't give a Psadan's patoot about any of this, and yet, I do . I don't know why."

"It's not too hard to figure it out, I don't think," Four said. "I'd wager that you're feeling homesick, no?" She paused, and Six nodded. There was no use trying to hide that, really. "No one likes to be alone, and even though you're not alone in the sense of being by yourself, you're the only one of us who, you know, lives in outer space and writes in a different alphabet than we do. So I can get it."

Six nodded, mostly to herself. It was kind of nice to hear that Four could understand where she was coming from. It was just a… annoying situation altogether. She loved her life now, and yet, now she was sort of wishing she perhaps wasn't quite so different from everyone else here in Four's universe. Why did she have to be the one from the only universe vastly different? For all Kevin's issues here, at least she could read the whatever-it-was. "You're pretty much right," she finally said. "I feel like a… a fish out of water, in some ways, you know? And I just feel like - like, oh, pifgot. It's frustrating. I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about, I don't think." Four shrugged. "Speaking of your alphabet, though, you keep bringing it up, but I don't think anybody's ever seen it yet. What's it like?"

"Aurebesh?" Six paused, thinking for a second. "Uh… it's less… rounded than your symbols? More straight-lines and stuff, like, I mean, if you've got something to write on I guess I can show you?"

Four dug around in her pockets for a moment and produced a crumpled piece of durasheet paper and a stylus. "That's a neat idea, I suppose. Here."

Six took the offered items and stopped walking for a moment to bear down on a nearby shelf. After thinking for a second, she scribbled out a nonsense message then handed it back to Four, who looked at it with interest.

"Neat. I guess." Four scratched the back of her head for a moment. "So… what's it say?"

"Oh," Six chuckled. "Basically? That I'm thirsty. And I thought we were going to get something to drink?"

"That's right." Four snapped her fingers and glanced around for a moment. "Oh, whoops - it looks like we walked right past it. It should all be just down this aisle here."

They turned and backtracked a few steps, until Four gestured down a specific aisle. The shelves here were stocked with a vast array of bottles filled with liquids of various colors and transparencies, and, of course, since Candace Six couldn't read any of the labels on them, she was reduced to asking what each of them was in turn, as a child might. Pagh – this was the part that was irritating, right here.

Still, it would be okay. She tried to soothe her internal aggravation with that knowledge – the knowledge that soon enough she would be home again, on Coruscant, with its actual spacescrapers and people that wrote in Aurebesh and, most importantly of all, her family.

Meeting these other copies of herself was... an experience, to be sure. It was kind of hard to enjoy it here, stranded in another universe beyond her own. (Which reminded her – she really ought to bring up the Force again to some of these other Candaces. She'd heard them talking about it here and there. It just might be something they had in common – and how strange was it that she still wasn't sure whether they shared the very thing that bound the galaxy together - in which case it was something they could build a conversation off of.) Not right now, though, because now she had to figure out what these liquids were, exactly.

"What is this?" She picked one filled with a transparent blue-tint.

Four snorted. "Sorry – it's just that that's window cleaner. You can't drink that."

"Oh." She sat it back on the shelf and picked another one at random that sort of resembled water with a faint yellowish tinge. "This?"

"...and that's bleach."

"Ah." Six paused. "And you can't drink that?"

Four shook her head. "No, no you can't. Here, it might be easier if you just tell me what you want instead. We can stay away from corrosive cleaning materials that way."

"Fair enough." Candace Six looked aimlessly up at the roof in thought for a moment. "How about ... oh, screw it, I'll just have water."

"After my own heart," Four replied, picking two bottles off a shelf and handing one over. "You can open it now – just hang onto the bottle so I can pay for it when we leave."

Six nodded and after a moment's worth of examining it, determined the lid to be some sort of twist-off thing. She grabbed it and yanked it off, drinking deeply. "Ah, that's good. Thank you."

Four shrugged. "No problem." She took a drink from her own bottle. "We probably ought to go find Three now. I'll bet she's waiting for us at the registers already."

"I guess you're kind of the boss here," Six replied. "Since you know your way around all that." She was usually pretty confident in her internal compass, but it was probably best not to risk that anymore after the whole debacle the day before yesterday with that.

"If we do get separated," Four said. "Don't try to find your own way out – look for one of those giant red marker things like that one over there. They mark customer assistance buttons. You can press it to get someone who works here to show you the way out. They'll give you a map, too, if you ask for it, but they're not as useful as all that because the scale is super tiny."

"Got it." Six nodded. She followed Four as the other woman led the way again – mostly back the way they'd just came, if Six's memory was any indicator of that. They walked for a few minutes until Four stopped again.

"Well, we're here and she's not. Guess we can wait for her?"

"Okay, I suppose." Six glanced around for somewhere to sit while they waited for the third Candace to show up again. "Or I suppose we could go after her?" Ah, there was somewhere – right over there, about fifty feet away, two large leather-looking chairs were sitting up on a small pedestal. She walked over and sat down on the closest one.

"I guess so?" Four shrugged again. "We probably should if she takes too much longer." She turned to face Six and chuckled. "Oh, you found the chair, did you? I don't know where it comes from, but Phineas gets such a kick out of those things."

"Oh?" Six shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy seat. "How so?"

"You gotta press that button right there," Four returned. "And it turns on. Like I said, it's not bad , but it's certainly not as amazing as he describes."

"Describing something as more amazing than is in reality is... like Phineas' thing, I think," Six said, reaching down for the button Four'd indicated. "You should hear him waxing on about Tatooine. You'd think it was a – a – a – oh."

Oh .

Candace Six had felt some things in her life. She'd felt some good things in her life. She'd felt some very good things in her life, even. But this… was on another level entirely. Umgallian blob massage what? This was heaven.

"Fo - o - o - ur," she tried to say, barely able to force herself to articulate the words as the chair kneaded her body. "You - u - u ha - a - ve go - o - ot to try - y - y thi - i - is."

It was - oh. There were no words, no thoughts, no ideas capable of describing it. She felt as if she couldn't feel her own brain - and she couldn't be bothered. Just to sit right here forever and ever? Oh, this was the life. She had to take one of these back to Coruscant.

Candace Four frowned slightly - or at least, it looked like she did. Six wasn't really paying much attention to anything else in the world right now, except for the wonderful feeling that was thrumming up and down her entire body, making her feel as if she was floating on air.

Oh, oh, oh . That hit the spot.

"Come on Six, we need to find Three and get checked out," Four said.

But Six was hardly interesting finding anyone right now. She just wanted to sit here forever - sit here and just… ah. She exhaled deeply, leaning back and closing her eyes. "Aaaaaaaaaah…"

"Six, seriously, come on. Let's go," Four's voice came again. "I have tried those - they're nice, sure, but really not as great as you're making it out to be."

"O - o - oh." Who cared if Four didn't like it, then? Six had found paradise. She was content . Content to stay put riiiight here, right until the end of time, in this soft chair with the hard bits underneath that just...it was incomprehensible. It was - it was perfection .

She could feel herself sinking farther and farther down into the cushion, and really didn't care. She wasn't ever going get up again, she didn't think. It might difficult to live out of a chair, though, hmm…

Ah, screw that - she was in no state for rational thought. The euphoria was just… it was too strong. All at once she was floating through the air and yet still firmly resting on the ground and it just felt good .

"Ho - o - ow do you - u - u ge - e - et one of the - e - ese?" Her breaths were slow and deep, the very action of inhaling and exhaling filling her entire body with a tingling sensation. Now, Candace Six had been to Tatooine (if only two times: once as a stormtrooper for all of about thirty minutes, and once many years later with her fiancé) and had always been able to recognize it for the dusty, hot, dry and barren planet that it was. And when her husband waxed loquacious on the grand adventures he'd had growing up there, well, she didn't doubt that he'd had adventures, but she knew well enough to doubt the glowing terms in which he would describe his once-home planet.

This was a completely different situation. What was Four talking about, 'not as amazing as he describes'? Six didn't think there was a way to overstate how good she felt right now.

She opened her eyes and stared off unseeing into the distance. The people walking around here and there - the harsh white light from the ceiling - the whirring of the air cooler unit - all these things seemed to fade into the background, disappearing from her senses. How could she think about those things?

How could she think about anything ? Just. ahhhhhhhhhh.

That was all she could think about (at least, clearly, anyway) and it was all that mattered. Right then, at that moment, her constant boredom, her frustration at being illiterate in Four's universe, her constant thoughts of home - all this faded away, dwarfed in intensity that was this amazingchair. It was incredible. It was mind-blowing, really, in every sense of the word.

And then, just like that, it was over.

Candace Six's breath caught in her throat as she suddenly snapped back into reality. "Awwww…" she reached down to the button again, and repeatedly mashed it, but the chair remained non-functional. "What happened?"

Candace Four reappeared next to her, holding in one hand a long, thin wire. "I happened," she said. "We have stuff to do, you know? It's been, like, twenty minutes."

Six crossed her arms, feeling a little miffed despite herself, and very, very disappointed. "Did you have to unplug it, though? Couldn't you have waited just a bit longer?"

"No, no, I couldn't," Four replied. Like I said: twenty minutes . I tried to talk to you but you wouldn't answer me so I just took care of it. Now come on - Three is waiting for us and Phineas needs these supplies. He sent us to the Googolplex, remember? We should already be back by now. There's a time to spend all day at the Superstore doing nothing, but that's not when you have an obligation to fill."

"I guess," Six grumbled. She stood up slowly, her legs wobbling underneath her, and grabbed onto a nearby display of something for support. "Whoa."

"You and Phineas and that stupid chair." Four rolled her eyes. "I didn't know I needed to take special avoidance procedures with you too."

"Sorry?" Six shrugged, carefully releasing her grasp of the display and standing on her own two feet once more. "It just - it felt so good ! I didn't even know it was possible to feel like that."

"And now you know it is," Four responded. She turned and began walking in the other direction, and Six hastily set off after her.

"Why does your husband not have one of these at your house?" she asked. Four winced, as if she'd stubbed her foot on something, but said nothing, letting her continue. "As soon as I get home, I am so getting him to build one for us! They're amazing - I - I don't know how I lived without them."

"Well, you do that then," Four replied. "Guess this means you finally found something in my dimension that you like? What, do you not have those in yours or something?"

"I, well, sort of? I mean, I've heard of massage stuff before - but nothing quite like that ." She shivered at the memory. "That was amazing . I needone of those on Coruscant. Phineas totally has to make one for us."

"You can't improve on perfection," Four muttered softly.

"What?"

"Nothing." Four cleared her throat and gestured ahead. "There's Three."

"I see her." Candace Six replied, half-waving to the third woman.

Three waved back. "There you are. I've been waiting here forever, I swear." She shook her head. "If my brother was here I'd have sworn you got stuck trying to peel him off these, like, massaging chairs they have. But whatever - check out all the cool stuff I got." She waved her hand at a hefty pile of random bits and bobs piled on the checkout counter. "Soundproofing insulation, and also this roll of radiation foil and some proton plasma and this canister of dehydrated water." She grinned. "And that's not all either - look at this ." She pulled out her comlink and held it out where they could see it.

It looked… different.

Whereas before it had been sleek and skinny, looking pretty much a datapad would, there was now a big black box taped onto the back of it, from which extended a long pole topped with an easily eight-inch-wide satellite dish.

"It's a bit crude, I know," she explained. "I ran into some issues with digital information encoding difference and it was the best I could manage in ten minutes. But it works and check it ouuuuut!" She tapped the screen rapidly for a moment, and the satellite dish on the pole began to slowly spin in circles, rocking back and forth as it did so.

Just as Six was about speak up and ask what they were supposed to be 'checking out', a voice spoke from the comlink.

"You have reached an operator. How may I direct your call?"

"Yes, hi," Three said into the comlink. "I'd like to be connected with one Candace Flynn, employee of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated."

"One moment, ma'am," the voice replied. "I'm directing your call now."

There was a moment of silence again, then a burst of loud music came from Four's pocket. She reached inside and produced her own comlink. "Incoming call from unknown number," she read aloud. "Hey, that's pretty nifty."

"I know, right? It's fully functional too: phone, Internet, radio waves, microwaves, radar, infrared, ultraviolet and even ELF waves. I can make contact with everything from big rig CB radios to nuclear submarines to space probes."

Four slid her own comlink back into her pocket. "Cool. That's handy to have around. But we really ought to be heading back to FFI now."

"Right." Three set her now-quite-clunky comlink down again and started pushing the other things from her stack through a scanner of some sort. "You know," she chuckled. "Buying all this stuff is making me feel like someone's about to ask-"

"Say." Six was suddenly seized with a recollection. Earlier on, Four's kids had gone on and on about their white milk and ice cream and yogurt. Seeing something like that for herself would be pretty neat, and this was a store for buying food, right? "Where's the dairy?"

Three and Four stared at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"What?" Six echoed, becoming more and more confused. "What is it? What did I say?" See, this was the issue with this whole alternate-dialect thing. What was so funny?

"Oh, it's nothing," Four assured her, breathing heavily. "Whew. I think I needed that."

Six sighed a little. It was probably just one more thing she was never going to be able to understand, thanks to her oh-so-different upbringing and home environment. Of course, the flip side was that she was sure there were many things she could say that Three and Four would never understand (maybe 'leaping lizard'? since even Six herself wasn't sure where that had come from), but that didn't really matter all that much here , since she was the only one here who spoke like, well, like she did - like everyone did, back home. For speaking (roughly) the same language, it was certainly difficult to communicate with the other Candaces sometimes.

She'd just wanted a chance to see all these white milk products that everyone kept talking about. It would have been a neat little story to tell. Of course, Six had heard of white milk before (and even other colors, like green) but the vast majority was the stuff was blue even despite that.

Okay, well, whatever. Maybe it was stupid to want to see it anyway. She'd just wanted a neat story to tell her husband and kids when she got home - not that she didn't already have enough of those, but at least this milk thing would be something they and she could all relate to. Not something straight out of thin air like so much of Four's universe seemed to be.

...maybe she should just let this milk thing go. Phineas was generally good at letting things go, after all. She exhaled deeply and tried to direct her thoughts into a path more like the one her husband's might follow. Three and Four hopefully weren't laughing at her, right? She'd just… said something that was funny, somehow. Maybe she'd pronounced something wrong or accidentally made a dirty joke or curse word? All those things were probably equally likely, to be fair.

Well, make a note to self , she thought. The word ' dairy ' is either pronounced weird here, or it's some kind of euphemism or curse word.

It would have been more convenient (and less embarrassing) to have figured this out another way - or even to never have had to figure it out at all - but at least she knew. Don't say 'dairy'. She could handle that.

"I'm going to go stand outside the front doors and wait for you two, okay?" she asked.

Four nodded, and she turned on her heel and strode away, past the shelf advertising various holojournals and towards the transparisteel doors, which slid open automatically to allow her to exit.

Stepping outside into the groundcar parking zone (which was much larger here than the one at Four's Phineas' building), she was immediately blasted in the face by a powerful gust of wind.

The sky had been gray before they'd gone into the store, but now it was downright threatening. The entire sky had darkened more than was natural for the late afternoon hour, and occasional distant rumblings could be heard, along with brilliant flashes of light that lit up on the horizon and then disappeared just as quickly.

Now, Candace Six wasn't one much inclined to call herself a genius, but it was pretty obvious that a storm was coming. The blanket of clouds looked about ready to burst as it was, unleashing a torrential downpour the like of which she'd only seen before on her one trip to the planet of Jabiim. (Or what was left of it, really, after the rains and the planetary bombardment and all.)

Still, it was enough experience for her to raise her eyebrows knowingly in recognition of the looming weather.

What was taking Three and Four so long? Well, whatever - it wasn't like Six had anywhere to be, really. She idly paced back and forth in front of the doors of the store, coming to a halt into front of the rides that they'd seen going in.

Well, if nothing else, here was at least a place to sit. She hoisted herself up and onto the little seat, exhaling loudly. It was perhaps a… bit to small for her? But not bad enough to make it that uncomfortable, really. She stretched and yawned, bumping her knee against the single red button inside the ride.

There was a sudden whirring and clunking from inside the machinery, followed by a loud clunk that made Six's hand automatically hop back down to her blaster again. But before she could do anything else, it suddenly began moving .

Her first instinct was to leap off, but… well, on second thought... it wasn't so bad, really. The ride just swayed back and forth, gentle and relaxed, making that soft whirring that was kind of nice to listen to. She had always liked rocking back and forth and slowness for some reason, come to think of it. And it was relaxing.

That chair had felt good , but this was… different. Nice, too, but in a more relaxing and calm way. Just going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth like that, to the accompaniment of the quiet mechanical sounds coming from inside the ride? It was like a chance to catch her breath, after all the craziness of the past few days.

Which was a chance she'd desperately needed, really.

Everything was going to be fine, wasn't it? Phineas liked to say so. And when had he ever been wrong about that? She'd always trusted him in that way before, and everything had always been fine before. Even though he wasn't here right to tell her that, she could nonetheless almost hear it anyway.

And even though he wasn't there to say it, she was going to trust him on it anyway. Sure, being in Four's dimension was annoying, and she was terribly homesick for Coruscant and missed her family more than anyone could ever imagine, but she was okay . And Four's Phineas was working on something or the other, and everything was going to be fine in the end .

It was what Phineas would say. It was how he would act, and it was going to be how she would act too.

At least as far as she could manage. (She wasn't perfect, after all.)

The transparisteel doors slid open behind her again, and Three and Four emerged from the store - finally - with their arms full of random bags and boxes.

"Whew-ee," Three whistled. "It is going to rain , isn't it?"

Four nodded. "Looks like it. We definitely ought to get back before it starts."

"Oh, that won't be a problem," Three replied, smiling a little. "Not like it would matter anyway - at Mach 6 raindrops might as well be standing still with how easily we could dodge them. The sheer friction of moving through the air that fast will vaporize them and keep us nice and dry anyway."

"That may well be," Four said. "But we'd still get wet carrying all this stuff into the building, no?"

"That… is true." Three shrugged. "Fair enough." She stopped suddenly, making eye contact with Six for the first time since they'd stepped outside. "Six? What... are you doing?"

Six blinked. "Nothing? Just… sitting here." She wasn't sure why Three seemed so confused, really. But she wasn't in a mood to be bothered right now. The soothing rocking of the ride beneath stilled her temper before even the surface could be rippled. She was homesick, sure, but she was gonna be fine. Make the best of the situation, right?

For a moment, Three and Four just stared at her, and an awkward silence hung over the three of them as she rocked back and forth.

"Right." Four cleared her throat. "I guess - yeah. Mmm." She hesitated, and once again Six was unable to figure out why her other selves seemed so taken aback.

They'd seen the rides before, she knew, because they'd talked about them when walking inside. What was with the staring, really? Was she doing something else that was considered strange or weird or insulting or whatever in this universe? Hopefully Three and Four would realize that if so, she really did have no idea what it was - whatever it was, it wasn't on purpose, really.

"Are you coming?" Three finally said. "We're - we're ready to go back now." She gestured towards the waiting groundcar in the parking zone.

"Yeah, yeah, I am." Six sighed, and climbed out of the ride. It was kind of a shame to leave it still rocking with noone to enjoy it, but Three and Four were ready to go. And given that Four's groundcar was pretty much the only means of transport that Six had around here (unless she wanted to take the heel-and-toe express everywhere) she was very much inclined to continue tagging along.

"We'll just stick all this stuff into the trunk and be off, then," Four said as they walked across the parking zone to the groundcar. "So that we can beat the rain. Well, hopefully, at least."

"Oh, don't worry about that ," Three replied. "Once we're airborne, there's not much we couldn't outrun."

"So you say. But if it starts now , that won't help very much, will it?"

"I - well, I guess not, no." Three frowned. "I guess we'd better go, then."

"That is what I was just saying." Four opened the groundcar trunk space and she and Three deposited their boxes and bags inside.

Six gingerly brushed her fingers on the door handle, intending to get inside. It was still warm - very warm, even - but no longer enough to burn her on contact. She opened the door and sat down inside, followed very shortly by Three and Four. This time, though, Six made very sure that her acceleration strap was snugly fastened over her hips - she was going to be prepared for this on the second go-round.

Four started the engine, and drove slowly out of the parking zone, until the store was some distance behind them. Then she stopped, and Three retrieved her little remote again.

Six double-checked her strap as the whining and clunking from inside the groundcar's engine and the giant rocket unfolding from its back told her what was about to happen. She braced herself for impact and-

FWOOOOOM .

-and they were off. A sheet of fire obscured the view out the front windscreen again, long orange tongues of flames licking upwards and outwards as the groundcar shot through the air at entirely unnatural speeds. (How Three could even see to steer this thing was something that still puzzled her.)

It was a fairly bumpy ride - as was probably to be expected, what with it technically being a groundcar - but it still wasn't quite as bad in that respect as one might have expected. And, much like the spacecraft in her own universe, it hardly felt like they were moving as quickly as Three claimed. Well, aside from the massive amount of fire that was covering the windscreen, illuminating the inside of the cabin with an eerie orange glow.

Looking out the viewport at the ground when traveling at this speed was almost enough to make her start feeling motion-sick. She looked instead out across the horizon - the point where the thick gray clouds met the faraway ground in a neat line - a line that even now was faintly blurred by faraway mist, occasionally lit up by brilliant flashes of light. (But no thunder. Well, Three had said this vehicle travel six times the speed of sound. Perhaps the sound of the thunder simply could not catch up to them?)

It was then that Six had an idea. Leaning forwards slightly in the seat, she cleared her throat conspicuously. "Hey, Three?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you make this thing go above the clouds?"

"Above the clouds? Sure, no problem." She fiddled with her remote and the nose of the groundcar tilted upwards.

For a moment, they were surrounded on all sides by dense gray mist that seemed to stretch on forever when she looked off into it. Then, completely soundlessly, the groundcar streaked out the top of the stormclouds. The tops of the clouds were much whiter, and everything up here was bathed in warm, golden sunlight. Pale blue sky arced infinitely overhead, broken up here and there with feathery white wisps of water vapor.

Candace Six had been on many planets in her lifetime, and even so, she never got tired of seeing new ones (even if some of them she only liked to see for a little while). And this was the reason why.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" Four said. The fire covering the windscreen had died down, and she was leaning forwards into the dash, looking out the windscreen.

"Yes," Six replied. "Yes it is." It was not an unfamiliar sight to her, really, and that was sort of what she'd been bargaining on. For a moment, maybe, she could imagine that beneath the billowing sea of cloudtops beneath them, she would find someplace more familiar. It wouldn't be Coruscant, of course, because this many and thick clouds wouldn't be allowed to form during the day - and because there would be spacescrapers sticking through the clouds even despite that. But it could have been somewhere else. Naboo, maybe, or Chandrila or one of those planets.

Of course, none of that was actually true . When Three took them back down underneath the clouds again, she knew what she would find. Four's Phineas' short spacescraper, a world that moved along in ways she simply couldn't wrap her head around, people and things and entire languages that defied her comprehension and fueled her homesickness to an inestimable degree.

Still, she was safe. There were things to eat and drink and although she often had difficulty communicating, it was far from impossible. And soon enough she'd be back at home with her husband and her children in her own home and this would all be nothing more than memory.

And when you tried to think about it like that , maybe the situation wasn't so bad after all.

Six smiled a bit to herself. Well, it did seem like after almost two decades, she was doing better at this sort of thing than she had given herself credit for back on Coruscant. Of course, she really could have done without the whole 'being torn out of the universe' thing to find that out… but it had happened, and she might as well try and keep herself together even despite that - as Phineas would probably say: make the best of it.

What 'making the best' of this situation would mean, she wasn't really sure. Maybe she should ask someone here if holocameras were a thing. Documenting this trip in holographs and holorecordings would definitely be something neat to show Phineas and the kids when she got back home. They would for sure like that.

...it wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

"I'm gonna take us down now," Three spoke up. "We do still have stuff to get done. Can't fly in circles in the upper atmosphere all day."

"Alright." Six exhaled and leaned back into her seat.

"Try to keep it more gentle this time, okay?" Four grabbed onto the steering like she was bracing for some kind of impact.

"I'll see what I can do - but no promises." Three fiddled with her remote some more, and the groundcar tilted downwards, plunging back into the clouds, leaving the warm yellow sunlight behind.

They burst out the bottom of the stormclouds directly over Four's city, dropping straight down like a stone towards the ground. Faster and faster and faster and faster… until even Six was subconsciously bracing for impact. She'd been in much larger and faster spacecraft before, but man, Three was a reckless pilot if she'd ever seen one. She much preferred the slow-to-the-point-of-boring air taxis and robohacks on Coruscant to this.

Still, thankfully, right at the last second, right before the groundcar impacted the ground like a flaming arrow of apocalyptic wrath, it pulled up, shooting along parallel to ground. The entire jerked around, shaking her like a rock in can, as the tires made contact with the ground again, complete with a terribly loud screeching that threatened to put out her eardrums as Four slammed on the braking mechanism, trying to bring the vehicle to a halt.

The groundcar did not like that idea, of course, as was evident by the sheer volume of the squeals and the plumes of smoke that billowed up from behind them. Still, momentum can only do so much without something fueling it, and, slowly but surely, the groundcar came to a jerky halt.

"And we're here," Four announced, breathing heavily. "Three, do me a favor: let's not use that thing again until somebody puts a better landing mechanism in this thing. And better brakes, too, I mean, these things are meant to stop you from sixty miles an hour, not six times the speed of sound."

"No, they aren't," Three replied. "If those were ordinary brakes, we've have skid a million and fifteen thousand feet by the time they stopped us. Another two hundred miles, or roundabout there." She shrugged slightly. "I looked at them when I working on the engines. Your brother's got them really tricked out. That was how come you could decelerate us from Mach 6 to zero so quickly."

"So quickly." Four frowned slightly and gestured out the viewports of the groundcar. "I suppose. Although leaving skid marks all over the parking lot like that doesn't seem particularly quick to me."

"I see," Three replied, nodding. "Still. Forty-five hundred miles an hour . That's one and a quarter mile traveled each second . That those brakes could stop you as quickly as they did is pretty good, I think."

"I suppose." Four opened the door and stepped out. "Come on, then - let's get this stuff inside. At least it's not started raining yet."

Six followed suit, climbing out and shutting the groundcar door behind her. "You need me to carry something?" After all, she didn't want to come off as entirely useless. And it was in her own best interest anyway - getting Four's Phineas this stuff would let him finish his device sooner, and thus would get her home sooner.

And everyone else, too, of course. (No, she was not going to feel guilty over thinking of her own home first. That was where she drew the line.) Heck, maybe getting to go home would help get Seven back into an… at least rational? frame of mind. The seventh Candace was… well, she was a basket case. One that apparently got off on yelling at people for no particular reason at all.

No, she wasn't going to let herself get riled up over this. Breathe in, breathe out. She was calm, collected and composed. And, cautiously ( verycautiously) optimistic. Though perhaps not quite the extent of optimism she knew her husband would have were he here, she was rather satisfied with herself for being able to manage this much.

The rest would come with time. She'd work on it, and although would probably never be quite at the level that Phineas was, she could at least make an attempt.

"Here," Four said, handing her a large nondescript brown box. "You got it?"

"Yup." Six adjusted her grip on the box slightly, to allow herself to peek over the top of it and see where she was going. "I got it." She wondered what was inside it that was so heavy? Well, it was probably something sciency and and complicated that she'd never understand anyway, like the random gadgets that Phineas sometimes brought home from the Works.

Still, just like with those gadgets from the Works, she was undeniably a bit curious about it. When Phineas and Ferb Four and Candace Three were only drawing strange symbols on blue paper or making odd marks on chalkboards down in the basement of the spacescraper, she'd lost interest pretty quickly, but if they were going to start actually building something, well, maybe she ought to try to watch them again, the way she sometimes did at home, too.

She followed Three and Four carefully down the stairs, picking her path down the steps slowly and cautiously.

Strangely, Candace Two was gone from her self-appointed post at the bottom of the stairs. Now, that was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. Candace Two was definitely… well, saying she was irritating was probably not very nice.

Okay, well, it may not have been nice , particularly, but it was still… kind of true. Two, she just - she didn't seem to know how to handle… things. She was completely obsessed with Darthenshmirtz and refused to make any concessions on anything in order to get along with anyone. Candace Six was hardly one to say that everyone needed to act as if they were completely at home when she herself was basically unable to do that.

But Two just… it was the way she handled things, really. Five and Seven were one thing. But at least Five and Seven kept, for the most part, to themselves. (Except, of course, when Seven was going on one of her rants, which was… an entirely different matter, really.)

Candace Two, on the other hand, just sort of did whatever she wanted, and insisted that everyone either get out of the way or get run over. And, so far, for the most part, everyone had acquiesced and chosen to get out of the way.

And even then Two had still found ways to get on everyone's nerves. Of course, Six had heard what little Two had said about her life, and it hadbeen terrible. With that kind of background it was perhaps not a surprise that the woman had turned out as surly and churlish as she had?

Still, unsurprising or no, justified or no, that didn't change the fact that Two had been exceedingly disagreeable, that she had been incredibly domineering, and if they were going to have to stay in Phineas Four's building for much longer, something really ought to be done about it.

Even as she thought it, it sounded selfish to her. Maybe she'd been approaching it from the wrong direction or something. Phineas wouldn't say that he needed to 'do something' about someone. He might… well, he might try to reach out to her?

Of course, Six had tried that, and had gotten basically instantly shut down.

Oh, what the heck. Two wasn't even here right now and Six had had a pretty good afternoon. She didn't want to spoil itself for her at the last moment.

"Phineas!" Four called as she opened the basement door. "We're back and we brought the-"

"Shhhhhh!" Phineas Four loudly shushed them, waving his hand frantically and holding a finger up to his lips. He pointed across the basement where… wait, what?

It was literally the person she'd just been thinking about: Candace Two. Only… she was on a couch, fast asleep, looking dead to the world. Of course, with those omnipresent glare shades she always wore, Six couldn't actually see her eyes anyway, but there was no doubt she was out like a light even despite that.

"I thought she said she was supposed to be protecting us," Three muttered under her breath. "Some protector, right there."

"Isabella?" Four asked. "What are you doing here?"

"It was right then that Six too realized that Isabella Four was suddenly present in the room - the very same look-alike of the drifting pilot/occasional smuggler that she'd seen earlier. Of course, unlike Phineas Four, who reminded her of her own husband in quite a few ways, Isabella Four was vastly different a character. Here in this universe, she'd married (to Ferb, no less, which was just as much a surprise) and had children and… she was generally less… foul?

Perhaps that was a decent way to put it. Isabella as Six knew her from home was not the most… pleasant of people, really, even if she had come around somewhat since the whole debacle surrounding Six and Phineas. Still, she was kind of abrasive, a drifter, someone who came and went as she pleased with no responsibility or cares to tie her down in any one spot for too long. Heck, the last time Six had seen her had been the last time Isabella'd been on Coruscant, which was… well, now it was almost two full years.

It was surprising, really, to see such a familiar-looking face (even if Isabella Four was cleaner and less scarred and everything) with such an unfamiliar-feeling temperament behind. Even a bit unsettling, maybe.

"I don't even know myself," Isabella Four answered. "I was told that I am to be a bodyguard. Or.. something of that sort."

"Told?" Four echoed, scowling. "By Two? Seriously? Phineas-"

"It's okay," Phineas Four spoke up quietly. "We talked about this this morning, remember? Two wants to make sure that we're safe while she sleeps - she refused to sleep unless we did this."

"Safe?" Three scoffed slightly. "Safe from what , exactly? Her imagination?"

"Imagination or no," Phineas Four said. "And I don't think it is, really, given what Candace and I saw in her dimension twenty-eight years ago, she believes it, and more importantly, she needs the sleep. If the only way she can get that is this way, then it'll be fine, really."

Isabella Four rolled her eyes slightly from the chair she was sitting on. "I mean, I'm already here anyway."

"Well, I guess so," Four relented. "Whatever." She led the way farther through the basement, into the laboratory area, and put down the boxes she was carrying. Six gratefully followed suit. Although the box she'd been given wasn't terribly heavy, her arms still becoming kind of sore from holding it for so long. It landed on the desk with a thump, jostling whatever was inside it.

She winced, afraid of having broken something, but no one else seemed to have noticed.

"Perfect," Phineas Four said, taking hold of one of the bags and peeking inside. "This is great. Ferb and I've got the prototype very nearly ready too - just a few more minutes and we can start running our first tests."

"How's the spacetime continuum look?" Three asked.

"Mostly the same," he replied. "Perhaps a bit less peaking in the y-sector. But it's only by a very small margin, so I don't think there'll be many ramifications in that regard." He shrugged. "Of course, we'll know for sure in just a little bit anyway."

"Hey," Six spoke up, wanting to get to say her piece before Phineas Four got busy again. "Do you guys have anything like a holocamera here?" She hesitated for a second. "You know, the things that take holographs?"

For a moment, everyone stared at her.

"You mean… a camera?" Four asked. "Does your dimension have some sort of obsession for the prefix 'holo-' or something?"

"I don't know?" Six said. "That's… just what they're called?" This wasn't that hard, really - why was Four making it hard? So what if a lot of the words she was used to did have that prefix anyway? (And they kind of did, now that she thought about it.) Holotech was exceedingly common, for good reason, and that was that. She didn't have to justify it to anyone.

"Don't worry about it," Phineas Four said, smiling slightly. "We know what you mean. And the answer is 'yes', yes we do. Why - you want one?"

Six nodded. "I - I, well, I don't have anything to give you for it except some credits - though apparently those are worthless here - but when we get home I'm sure I can find something worth trading for it?"

Phineas Four was rummaging around in a drawer. "Don't worry about it," he said over his shoulder. "I've got tons of these things around. Just need… to… find… ah ha." He turned back around and held it out to her.

The small black box was oddly heavy in her hand she took it. But aside from its seemingly unusual weight (when were holocameras this heavy anyway?) it looked close enough to one from home. Of course, the buttons and the screen were labelled in that unreadable gibberish that everyone else here called a language, but Six wasn't dumb - she could figure out to work a holocamera.

"That's the shutter," Phineas Four explained. "You flick that switch to toggle picture/video mode. That button shows the pictures and videos you've taken, and you use the keypad to navigate the menus, and press that button again - or the shutter button - to get back to capture mode. And, of course, that's the power button."

Six pressed the indicated button and the screen lit up, and a lens extended from the front of the device. She held up the holocamera, and pushed the shutter, catching a picture of Phineas Four with his eyes shut from the flash. "Thanks."

"No problem. If you need anymore help, then you can just come down here and interrupt us."

She nodded. "Okay." Well, she probably wouldn't do that, help or no help, anyway. She really didn't want to interrupt him while he worked - that wouldn't serve to get her home faster, and that was what she really wanted.

"Want to come upstairs with me for a bit?" Four asked Isabella Four.

Isabella Four rolled her eyes again. "I shouldn't - I have been told to stay down here on pain of my life." She leaned back in her chair and put her feet on the table. "Don't worry - I'll be fine, though you will owe me such a favor."

Click .

Six snapped a picture of Isabella and Candace Four talking. That would be an interesting picture to show her family, for sure. Well, Anakin and Tyrria hadn't even met Isabella (she was not really a… child-friendly? sort of person), but still. Phineas would know, and would no doubt be interested.

She turned and walked out of the basement, back into the stairwell, where, for once, Two was gone. Well, if she was going to try and make something good out of this unfortunate happenstance, she might as well start trying now, right?

She toggled the holocamera into video mode, and turned it around so the lens was facing her, then pressed the shutter.

"Hey, everyone. So, who's ready to see some real jookley stuff? This whole planet is… wild." She shrugged, feeling a bit awkward for talking to herself like this, but determined to get through it anyway. "First, let's go check out the parking zone. You've never seen so many groundcars."


	36. Coaster Across the Great Divide

It was the sound of the electric drill that did it.

Probably.

Honestly, Candace Five wasn't all that sure how she recognized the sound in the first place. Then again, there weren't many things that did make that sort of high-pitched mechanical whirring sound, so it wasn't like there were many options for her to guess from. It wasn't like she was dumb or anything.

The rain outside was coming down in sheets now, pounding on the windowpanes of the ninth floor of the building, punctuated by occasional flashes of lightning that lit everything up with the intensity of the noonday sun and rolling thunder that felt as if it shook the building down to its very core. It was the sort of storm that made a person glad for a roof overhead, even considering what that roof stood for, and grateful for a warm and dry place to sleep, even if that place was nothing more than a mattress thrown haphazardly on the floor of an unused office on the ninth floor of a building currently without a functioning elevator.

(Seriously, someone ought to fix that. It was getting annoying by now. Candace Two wouldn't like that, of course, but then again, Candace Five was sure that no one took Two seriously anyway.)

At any rate, she'd been sitting on her 'bed', trying her best - and still kind of failing - to lose herself in a book. It… yeah, it wasn't working that well. It wasn't that Candace didn't like reading - she rather did, and could read pretty quickly anyway - but that someone in the next room was making some kind of intolerable racket.

At first there had been the banging, like somebody was having the time of their life with a massive drum set or something. Candace had promptly shut and barred the door of the office that had more or less become her bedroom, only to discover, much to her chagrin, that the sounds came just as well through the paper-thin walls separating one office from the next.

She had briefly entertained the thought of trying to move her mattress-bed somewhere else, but all the other rooms on this floor were taken up anyway. At least, the ones nearby were. She probably could've dragged her bed up the hallway for, like, three miles or something, but that would just defeat the point and probably be more effort than it was worth.

So, instead, she just grit her teeth and redoubled her efforts to distract herself with her book. The fact that the book was… not very interesting probably didn't help her much in that endeavor, either.

And then there was the electric drill, and that was the last straw. Banging she could take, along with whatever else it was that was causing the heretofore constant cacophonous sound, but not the constant whining of one of those drills. Those things… ugh. They just hurt her ears, honestly.

That, then, was the reason that she gave a long suffering sigh and sat the book down before she stood up. She couldn't really imagine a reason that Four's brother would be up to something right next door when he had not only that whole entire basement but also all of today to do this sort of thing.

And today had actually been an alright day , she lamented herself as she opened the office door and stepped out into the hall. And it had, really, given the circumstances - another dimension, specifically an incestuous one, yadda yadda yadda. After spending a week here last year, this second week now was losing its shock value a lot faster, to the point where by now, at the close of the fourth full day, it was more boring than anything else.

'More' boring, of course, because it would never quite reach that point fully, but ever since Five had promised Four that she would sort of… "lighten up" on that whole subject, and Seven had pulled her little face-heel turn and cut her self off from the world, there really wasn't much to do.

Which had left her with one of the least remarkable Sundays in recent memory, consisting of rising late, eating slowly, reading some, going for a walk under a growing storm, reading more, eating more, sitting down with one of the computers in the building and poking around on the Internet doing stupid things, and eventually getting tired of that and reading some more.

It was really unfulfilling, she had to admit, though there wasn't much else to do.

And, of course, although she hadn't been interrupted once all day (except in the late afternoon, by Six, who suddenly fancied herself a reporter and wanted to take a dozen pictures with and of her), now , when she was actually actively invested in wanting quiet, someone had to come up and make an insufferable racket.

She'd guessed that it was one of Four's brothers, up here doing something for… some reason, but as it turned out, that wasn't the case. It wasn't Phineas (or Ferb) at all - it was another Candace.

Wait, what ? she thought. Oh, wait a second - that's right. Candace Three.

Although 'Three' was on the tip of her tongue, along with a few other choice words about causing such a racket now , of all times, she didn't actually say it. Instead, she leaned against the doorjamb of the other office and just sort of… watched Three, who clearly had no idea she was being watched.

There was a pile of lumber on the floor, and Three was was busily taking pieces from it and fastening them together with that electric drill that had annoyed Five from the other room. It was still annoying now, but kind of less so since she wasn't trying to read despite it anymore.

What Three trying to build anyway? Whatever it was, it was clearly still in its beginning stages, because it was still very much unrecognizable.

Candace Five had seen Three doing some stuff in the non-dimension, but she hadn't really been paying attention then, having been too distracted by her rivalry with Four, her irritation at Two, her kind-of a fear of Six, and her confusion upon meeting Kevin. And she'd known sort-of superficially that the other woman was helping Four's brothers do… whatever they were doing down in the basement, but whenever she looked over there, it hadn't looked like much except drawing on paper and writing on chalkboards and sketching on blueprinting paper, without any actual building .

Here, though, she was definitely paying attention. And as she watched the pile of lumber be summarily dismantled and assembled into a… was that bedframe? (yes, yes it was), she was left with no doubt about what she'd always known but never really paid any real mind to.

All her life she'd struggled with her brothers and their immature and dangerous creations. Okay, well, that was a bit of an unfair exaggeration, if she had to say so herself. How about all her childhood ? That was definitely true, right up until she'd gone off and left home to join Jeremy in college.

Coming back for summer vacation after that first year of college had been weird . She'd been fully expecting another hundred and four days all too similar to her childhood, filled with danger and crazy inventions that really shouldn't have been built and (probably) pain. Instead, there'd been… well, there had been some of that? Maybe. But it was noticeably less, even to her.

The projects were smaller, less impressive. The natural laws flaunted were less immoveable. The impossibilities achieved were less… impossible, if such a thing was even possible. Days would sometimes go by without anything being done, and on the days that something was done, sometimes it wasn't even bustable . Not that a twenty year old woman should've been trying to bust her little brothers to her mother anymore, but it had certainly helped when she could look at the project of one of those hundred and four days and be… unimpressed.

And it dropped off more steeply every year she'd returned for summer break, until she'd actually gradually found herself not dreading the yearly hundred and four days so much. And then, early one year, there'd been an incident with an earthquake that'd shaken the town of Danville. She'd gotten a chance to return home because of the disaster, which, of course, had been caused by her brother. Still, something about causing such widespread destruction (even if the quake wasn't that bad) seemed to have affected him, and she'd returned home for the last time after graduating at the end of that year to find it… utterly gone.

After so long, she was free.

Even so, despite all that, her brothers were the ones who'd done those sorts of things. (And grown out of them for the most part, thankfully, but the fact remained.) They'd done them. They had always been the ones to do them.

Seeing a version of herself do it was… weird. Looking at Three could have been like looking in mirror, just about, (like with pretty much any version of herself, except Two with her sunglasses that Five was pretty sure by now were glued onto her head), and yet here she was now, watching Three do something that Five was pretty sure she'd never be able to do with an air of near-effortlessness.

And it wasn't even like a bedframe was all that complex or even dangerous, provided that it was just that, which, if Three was anything like Phineas and Ferb in their more immature years, it was almost guaranteed to not be.

Still, drawn partly by curiosity and partly by boredom, she continued leaning there and watching, right up until Three screwed in the last piece and picked up her mattress, slid it into place on the frame, and turned around.

"Oh!" Three exclaimed, jumping suddenly, and dropping her screw gun, which clattered noisily onto the floor, narrowly missing her toes. "You - you scared me," she panted. "You can't sneak up on people like that, Four."

Four? Five glanced down at her own shirt and noticed that her own identification sticker was missing. Oh, that was right - she'd not thought to put a new one after showering that afternoon, not thinking that it would be necessary.

"Not Four," she corrected the other woman. "Five."

"Five?" Three seemed to eye her cautiously. "Oh." She hesitated for a long moment more before continuing. "What do you want?"

Five shrugged. "Nothing."

"Not even a ham sandwich?"

"What?" Five raised one eyebrow.

"Nothing." Three awkwardly brushed her off, staring kind of intensely at her the whole time, her face slowly growing redder as time went by. "Sooo…"

Five didn't quite know why, but for some reason she got the feeling that Three was nervous for some reason. Oh, wait, she probably did know why, didn't she? Three and Four and Six were the three incestuous Candaces. If she had to admit it, she kind of preferred Three's getting nervous over the way Four would just shove it all up in her face. 'Would', of course, because she had so far followed through on her promise yesterday and left Five pretty well alone.

"Don't worry," she decided to say. "I am… not interested in discussing - in discussing your brother."

"Oh," Three repeated. "Really? Then - then what are you here for?" She reached down and picked up her screw gun off the floor, walking over to the desk on the far side of the office and setting it down there.

Well, what was she here for? Nothing, really, with perhaps the exception of a means to relieve her boredom, especially now that she was pretty much alone in a sea of weird Candaces whose senses of normalcy were horribly skewed. Instead of saying any of that, though, she decided to point at the bedframe in the middle of the office. "You built that?"

She didn't know why she phrased it as a question, really. Of course Three had built it, after all, Five'd watched her with her own eyes. She also had no earthly idea where she was going with this.

"I did," Three replied, nodding slowly.

For another long minute, silence hung in the room as Five tried to figure out something else to say.

"And you do all the things that Phineas and Ferb used to do?" Again, why the asking for confirmation? She already knew this. Still, it was kind of hard imagine that a version of herself could ever do such things anyway. Especially so because she knew how long and hard she'd fought against her brother's dangerous creations, against the irresponsibility and immaturity they represented.

To know that a version of herself - to see that version of herself doing it was… thoroughly weird, and kind of unsettling, if she had to say so herself.

Still, she had told Four yesterday that she would make an effort to be more - more tolerant and whatnot. Not that there was really much to tolerate here, specifically. (At least not yet.)

Three nodded slowly, the corners of her mouth turning slightly downward. "I do, yes. Why - what is it?"

"I don't know, honestly," she answered. "I mean, I always sort of knew? But never really paid attention to it before. It's just… it's kind of-" she stopped abruptly mid-sentence, suddenly remembering something Four had mentioned the previous day. "I mean, it's - it's - uh…" Oh, crud, now this was really awkward.

Three blinked, drumming her fingers on the desk's top. "It's 'weird'? That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?" She exhaled and smiled faintly, and the drumming stopped. "That's okay. I - I know my place in the world. It's… well, it's worked out so far, I guess. It's like a designated role anyway, so I don't think I ever really had much of a choice in the matter."

"I guess," Five replied noncommittally. Man, Four'd better be grateful for this. Or at least, she had better be grateful if she ever learned of this, since there was a good chance she wouldn't. For all her dealings with Four last year and this year, for brushing shoulders with Three and Six constantly over the past few days, it really never did get any easier to accept what they had done.

But Five was over that anyway - or at least, over the outward expression of it, as she'd promised. And, like any mature adult should be, she would be true to her word.

Three blew out a long breath and shrugged. "It's how the Force works, I guess. I dunno." She stopped for a second to stare at Five and shrugged again. "But what do you want , if you're not here to lecture me?"

"I don't know," Five said, shrugging again. "So, it's true then. And the other things Four said too, you know, the whole getting sick if you don't? I mean, she told me this story about a - a storm cellar or something?" She sort of found that difficult to believe, but to be fair, although Four had done a lot of twisted things, Five'd yet to see any evidence that she was also a liar. After all, you've got to give the devil his due.

"Getting sick ," Three snorted. "Yeah, that's true too. I, well, I don't know what all exactly Four told you, but I don't really think there's a way to overrepresent it in any case." She shrugged sort of halfheartedly. "What can I say? Weird? Yeah, sure - tell me something I don't know."

Geez, Four wasn't joking, was she? Three really did have some kind of issue with this. Knowing that, she probably ought to steer whatever-the-heck this conversation was away from it, in a more… well, different direction. Five still had no what she was even doing. Candace Three obviously wasn't thrilled about talking to her either, if the way she kept eyeing Five was anything to go by.

"I'm sorry," she eventually decided on. "I'm - I'm just having trouble picturing, well, picturing myself doing all those re-" oh, wait, would that impose on the compromise she'd reached with Four yesterday? Probably. Best to not say it, then. "-those things."

"I'm sure you are," Three replied dryly. "That's the same thing that Four told me - I'm not really surprised by it anymore. But it's the way things work, and that's that."

"I suppose," Five said thoughtfully. "And because you get sick, you can't ever stop." She shook her head. "That must suck."

Three looked strangely torn, her face twisting up into a unreadable expression. Oh, what was it this time? Five had been watching herself. She hadn't said anything , as far as she knew. She'd promised Four to stay generally away from the subject of incest, but at the same time, she couldn't really help it if Three read some hidden meaning into Five's perfectly innocent words.

Maybe it's her guilty conscience , she thought wryly, even if she doubted it. So far there'd been no indication of anything of the sort existing inside either Four or Three or even Six, and now would be an awfully strange time for it crop up.

"At times?" Three said, almost like it was a question. "There have… there have been times, I guess." She shrugged. "But for the most part? I… well, I'm good with it." She stopped and shot Five a pointed glance. " Every thing, Phineas included. You're not going to change my mind on that , you know."

Five just about couldn't resist the urge to roll her eyes. She wanted - so badly - to fire off some retort that if Three felt so strongly about needing to defend her… messed-up take on sibling relationships, then she couldn't have been as unshakably secure in it as she liked to claim, but… ugh. She really didn't feel like getting into this with Three, too, now that she'd finally managed to get it settled with Four. "I didn't say anything about that," she said instead, doing her best to make sure her tone was perfectly even and not all exasperated. "And I won't, either, if you don't. Sound fair?"

A moment or two passed with Three regarding her suspiciously before finally answering. "Sure, I guess. Wait, when did you get so non-interventionist anyway?"

"Maybe I got bored of arguing," Five replied flippantly. "Does it really matter?"

"I… guess not." Three shrugged. "Okay, whatever. Fair enough."

"Yeah." Five nodded. Well, this was going wonderfully, wasn't it? Just wonderfully. If she was going to keep standing here, she ought to say something , at least, to break this awkward silence between them. "How's this even possible? With you, I mean."

"I don't know," Three said. "I was born with it. Just like Phineas. And Ferb. And, later on, Amanda and Xavier. It's just the way it happened."

Five shook her head. "I find that… difficult to wrap my head around. Like, for so long I tried to keep my brothers from building those st- st- stationary? - sometimes they were stationary - inventions. I did everything in my power. Of course, I always failed, but they later stopped anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. In retrospect, I probably should have just relaxed more as a teenager, I mean, they would probably have grown out of it with or without my influence anyway. But then, here's you. I don't know… I can't really comprehend it."

Three just stared at her for a moment. "Four told me about that, you know."

"Four told you about what?" Five snorted. If Four'd been trashing her behind her back, well, there would be some words, that was for sure. Then again, what could she expect anyway? Five was feeling a bit like the lone adult trapped in a building full of children, along with one psychopath and one basket case. Thankfully, the latter two seemed to have disappeared recently, so all that was left was the children, along with their unwilling babysitter.

And Kevin. (Honestly, Kevin was kind of an enigma. She hailed from a dimension so radically different that it drastically showed in her behavior and even her name. But although she seemed to be an adult - and happened to be mayor of Danville, no less - her reaction to both Phineas' and Ferb's irrational and unwise obsession with dangerous inventions and to the reveal of Four's and Three's and Six's… ahem … life choices had been so muted that it left Five kind of confused on what conclusion to draw there. And then there was her connection to the talking zebra and… it was just a weird situation.)

"That your brothers - Phineas and Ferb Five - stopped inventing," Three explained. "You know, I find it hard to understand that ."

"It's not so hard to understand." Five said. "They were irresponsible kids. They grew up, and left irresponsible kid stuff behind them. It's what you do." She suddenly hesitated. "Well, not you , specifically. Or your brothers? Because you… well, because you can't ." Suddenly, Five was very glad that whatever it was in Three's dimension that made them sick like that was not a thing in her own. Imagine that - Phineas and Ferb never growing out of that phase, no matter how much time passed, not because they didn't want to, but because they physically couldn't .

Yikes. What would she have done in a situation like that?

...well, it hadn't happened, and wasn't going to. So, really, was it worth thinking about? No, no it wasn't.

"I guess that's one way of looking at it?" Three frowned. "I don't know if I'd call it 'kid stuff' - haven't seen any normal kid doin' it, but that does hinge on normalcy, so I guess I'll give you that one. And no, stopping just randomly is… not within my capabilities, really. But it never has been, so I guess it's just my life, or something."

Five frowned. She'd never talked to Three before, at least, beyond straight-up shouting at her in an argument, which didn't really count. She did have to admit that this wasn't quite what she'd expected to find, either. She didn't really know what she had been expecting, in all honesty. Someone… closer to Phineas and Ferb in their more immature days? It was kind of hard to unequate the link between those ridiculous inventions and immaturity in her mind, after all, putting so many people in danger and driving their sister and basically everyone with common sense up the walls for some 'project' was the height of immaturity. The very height. It seemed a logical enough connection to her. She hadn't really ever asked anyone else about it, but she didn't really need to because it was kind of obvious, in any case.

But if Candace Three did it because she had a physical need for it…

Of course, she should keep in mind that, like Four, Three was similarly tangled up with her own brother. She obviously wasn't that much better than Four, at any rate. But maybe on this subject, at least, she could find some sort of something that might possibly be considered... common ground.

It would be so ironic, too.

"Do you even like it?"Five hazarded.

"Like what?"

"You know," she said. "The whole, like, inventing thing. I mean, you keep going on about how 'insane' it is - and don't worry, I fully agree. But are you doing it because you have do it, despite how you feel?"

For a minute or two, Three just stared at her, like she'd just made some profound statement or something. She stared with such an intensity that it was kind of starting to weird Five out, even, before she finally responded. "No. It's alright. Good by me, I mean, you should see all the great stuff I can do. And Phineas and me and the kids? I mean, we can do anything , just about. I, well, I'm happy with it."

"Oh." Five could feel her heart dropping somewhat. Okay, yeah, it was kind of asking to be disappointed, but she'd at least tried, right? None of the other Candaces seemed to realize what sort of things Phineas' and Ferb's creations had stood for, except Candace One, and that didn't really count either, after all, One was just a little girl. Two was ridiculously obsessed to the point of insanity, Four and Six were generally too busy singing their brothers' praises, Seven completely misconstrued them and cast Phineas and Ferb as some kind of evil masterminds, Kevin… was Kevin. "Sorry, it's just you were saying all those things about how weird and crazy it is and I just thought, you know…"

"Oh, it is ," Three half-chuckled. "There's no debating that , at least." She shook her head and shrugged. "But, honestly, I've been the weird one my whole life. It's me . I can't get away from it, so I might as well enjoy it, right? And I do, at any rate. I guess I do complain about it a lot at times, but… it's been part of my life for two decades now. I can't really imagine living without it again, nor do I particularly want to, if I'm being honest."

"I guess so?" Five replied, not fully sure what she was guessing at anyway. "Well, you have to, and you like to. Guess it worked out for you, then." Probably not so much for all the people that were put in danger thanks to inventions of the caliber that she knew they were talking about. But if Candace Three had to, well, what exactly could Five say? She could perhaps scold her for being so irresponsible as to enjoy it, but she couldn't exactly think of anything else to say.

Well, she technically could , but those things would be verging awfully close to the line that she'd said she'd stop crossing yesterday. So, yeah.

"Kind of," Three said. "And, really, no matter how much I might complain about it, there really is nothing like it." She waved her arms in the air, gesturing wildly. "Sometimes I wish Mitch would leave us alone for once, but in general, it's pretty great. And yeah, maybe there's some things I won't get to do, but then you gotta think of all the things I do get to do and it's like… well, for being the designated weirdo, it's not so bad after all. And I'm happy, which is… well, that's the important part, right?"

Five shrugged. "Sounds right, I suppose." She wasn't quite sure how Three could so quickly see-saw back and forth between lambasting having to invent stuff and defending it? It seemed kind of contradictory and rather counterproductive. But apparently it worked for her, so whatever. "I just… I don't know? It's unnatural ." That was probably the best way to put it, anyway. No one was supposed to be messing about with the most basic laws of nature, but of those who did, it was Phineas and Ferb. Not - not herself. That just wasn't how it worked. It was never how it had worked, and it wasn't supposed to be ever how it would work.

Three snorted again. "That's what Four said too, you know. I guess that's not too much of a coincidence, given that you both are more normal than I am, in that sort of way." She shrugged. "Natural, unnatural, I don't know. It's how I was born, it's how Phineas was born, it's how our children were born. It's just the way it is, really."

Five raised one eyebrow, choosing to benevolently ignore the obvious reference to Three's incestuous relationship in favor of something perhaps less shocking but also closer to home - or at least closer to her now , which was about as far from 'home' as you could get. Mainly, she was pretty sure that 'normal' was not a descriptor one could use for Four. To be Four was to spit in the face of normalcy. There was no way the adjective applied.

Five was normal - or at least, she had worked hard to be as normal as she could get coming from her family. Four? Not hardly. Not in a million years, no, not in a million light years. (Wait, wasn't that a comparison that Three would make anyway? Where was the line between terms that Five should and shouldn't use? Lightyear… was a pretty well-known one, but it was kind of science-y too… maybe she should be safe about it. Normal people did not obsess about lightyears.)

To be fair, though, Three hadn't exactly said that Four was normal, either. She'd said ' more normal' which… okay, even Five had to admit that was kind of true? At least when compared to Three, who was like Four insofar as messed-up relationships went, but also with the whole inventing thing (which wasn't even something she could help , apparently).

Of course, the next thought that entered her mind was wondering why if Three was, in theory, so much worse than Four was, was it kind of proving to be easier to talk to one as opposed to the other? She certainly couldn't relate to Three on… anything at all.

At least with Four, they'd pursued… you know, roughly the same career. And they were the same age, something that she'd learned yesterday was not apparently not true for all of them. And they had-

You know, she really shouldn't be doing this. Four was… not a person she should be trying to relate to. At all. Four was everything she'd rejected in her childhood, and also a boatload of things that she'd never had to reject because she wasn't bent up enough in the mind to ever even considerthem.

Candace Five was happy in her life. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but who's was? Hers was good enough for her, and she'd fought long and hard to get it that way. She wasn't going to ruin it all for herself now, not after all that, after last year, heck, after the events of the past few days, even.

"You know," Three spoke up. "I'm getting the impression you want something from me."

"No, no I don't," Five assured her. "I was just… thinking."

"Mmm hmm." Three nodded. "And staring at me like you're trying to burn a hole into my brain." She made a face, sticking out her tongue. "Trust me, you don't want in there. But, whatever - I do have some extra lumber here. You want a - a bedframe or something?"

Candace Five blinked, surprised, perhaps even unreasonably so. "What?"

"A bedframe?" Three repeated, furrowing her brow and generally looking confused. "You know… like the one right there?" She pointed at the one she'd just built.

Well, it did look more comfortable than having just a mattress thrown on the floor, at least. Sleeping on a real bed again would be nice. Provided it was just a bed, which… yeah, okay, what were the odds of that?

" Is it just a bedframe?" she asked, regardingly the bed cautiously. "And nothing else?"

"What?" Three scoffed. "That would be boring, though." She reached under the desk and produced a small gray box, waving it in the air. "Check it out. It makes itself, and it's got a built-in gyroscopic stabilizer in case of earthquake or strong winds. Plus it would float if you put it in water and would hover if you knocked out the floor from underneath of it. You can change the color of the bedding with this keypad, see?" She pressed multiple buttons in rapid succession, causing the blankets to flash different colors in an almost seizure-inducing way. "Oh, yeah, and it has tractor disruptors built into it so you can't be abducted by aliens in your sleep. Those… also have the side effect of preventing the plowing of nearby fields? But the alien thing is enough justification, I think."

Candace Five exhaled through her nose, hardly able to resist the urge to roll her eyes. "And when would that ever come in handy?"

"More often than you'd think," Three replied. "Mitch is usually pretty good about letting us get dressed before he does stupid stuff, but ever since that one time a few years ago, we don't take that chance anymore. Of course, there's a chance that he was just as embarrassed as we were, but you never know these things about aliens. It's a culture thing, I think. Meap apologized on his behalf, at least."

Five just… just stared. At the crazy story, at the ridiculous implications it had, at the completely serious way that Three was rattling it all off. "Okay, well… if do you want to make another one on which to put my mattress, leave all that stuff off, will you?"

Geez. At least, even at her worst, Four had some common sense. Not as much as would have probably benefited her, but some . At least enough to know that all… that was not necessary, was probably not safe, and was definitely not responsible. What the heck was wrong with Three?

Well, the same thing that had been quote unquote 'wrong' with her own brothers for so long: immaturity and short-sightedness and impatience getting the best of them, clouding their vision of what was actually for the best. Quite unfortunately, however, Three would never be given a chance to grow out of the phase.

Candace Five liked to imagine that had Three been given that chance, she would surely have taken it, would have left such childish things in the past, and along with that would have realized that Jeremy was the person she needed in her life to support her in a serious way.

But obviously Three'd never been given that chance. Normal life was objectively better - even the people that she had thought would resist it to the end of their days had realized that, had left that frame of mind behind in favor of it. If even Phineas and Ferb could acknowledge that, then there was no way a version of herself wouldn't, if given the chance. But that chance had never been given - Candace Five couldn't possibly think of anything that could provide motivation to reject that normalcy, to regress back into the childish frame of mind that even her brothers had grown out of with time.

Why was she trying to justify this craziness anyway? Was she so desperate for some sort of companionship here that she had to tell herself that surely Three would have been that companion if she'd been given the chance to become it?

Okay, so what if she was? There was no one on Earth who could blame her for feeling that way. When the only other version of herself who was married in a normal fashion was freaking Kevin , you sank down to desperate measures, okay? Ugh, maybe she should try to find Kevin after all. That would be… an experience, for sure.

A slight shudder ran up and down her spine at even the thought of such a thing. Kevin was… maybe it wasn't rational to be so uncomfortable with her about a vague association with that zebra? Certainly not compared to all the madness that was going on here. And yet, somewhere in Five's mind, the thought of actually going up to Kevin and talking to her was unbearable enough that she'd actually prefer sticking it out here. At least for the time being.

"Hmm." Three seemed to be deep in thought. "I don't think I can promise you anything. But I'll do my best and we'll see what happens." She stretched and stood up from the desk again, scooping up the screw gun. "Come on, let's get busy."

"Whoa, there," Five said, holding up her hands. "'Let's'?"

"Yes, 'let's'," Three replied. "I think we can - oh, wait. You don't like this stuff, do you?"

Five frowned. "It's not that I don't like this stuff specifically, it's that I don't like what it represents . It's the im-"She stopped abruptly, suddenly getting the feeling that if she went any farther, it would do nothing but spark an argument, which was something she'd managed to avoid doing all day so far, and didn't want to bungle into now , of all times, before going to sleep. "I'd just - I'd just prefer not , okay? Can we leave it at that for now?"

"And yet you still want me to make you a bedframe," Three mumbled under her breath. "Hypocritical much?" Candace Five glared at her and she shrugged. "What? You do realize that someone has to build these things, right? Why not me, then? Why not you? It's not like your bedframe at home just manifested itself into existence from nowhere, after all."

"And I don't have an issue with bedframes," Five returned calmly. "I have issues with flying bedframes that double as rocketships and oceangoing vessels and whatnot because that is impossible - impossibly reckless and dangerous - and that is something I disagree with."

"You realize that it can't be im possible because I just did it." Three returned. She waved one hand flippantly in the air. "Which is kind of a contradiction in terms. I guess it's a good thing you weren't around when they were inventing the newfangled wheel , Miss 'Impossible'." She afixed a withering stare in Five's direction. "Whatever. I'll still do it because I want to and if you want it when I'm done then you can have it. If not, well, I'm sure someone else will take it."

"I'm sure they will." Candace Five was really feeling the urge to wade into this fight now, but… no. She was a rational, sensible adult and she was above this. Today had been long and boring, but it had been tolerable, and she was fully intent on keeping it that way. So, no fighting. Instead, she took a deep breath in an effort to soothe her already rising temper. (Four owed her such a favor for this.) Hmm, actually. Four, yeah. That was probably a good way to explain herself - especially since it fully seemed that her incestuous selves could only understand sense if it was talked to them by a different, also incestuous self.

It was like they had a little club or something going on, a clique, an in-group, into which the price of entry was to have sex with your brother.

That was not a club Five ever intended to join.

So, she took another deep breath and expelled it slowly. "I have nothing against either you or what you do." Not true at all, really, but then again, it was white lies that made the world go round, wasn't it? Like the ones she told Jeremy when he asked her if something was bothering her. "But I do have my own - perhaps arbitrary - preferences. One of which is that I do not partake in this sort of thing." In bustable behavior , an inner voice whispered, even though she knew what her psychiatrist had said about thinking like that. (Ugh, here was another entire week of insanity she was never going to be able to tell anyone, let alone him .) "I've seen you and Four, Three, and don't tell me you try to conscript her for this because I know you don't. So would you please just respect my preferences in the way you respect hers?"

She was also well aware that here she was again, putting herself and Four in the same boat, even though they didn't belong in the same ocean . But what could you do? She was really trying here - surely somebody would see that and give her a break.

Three stared at her for a moment more. "You're right, I guess. I - I'm sorry. I guess I'll do it myself, then."

"Don't feel like you've got to give me anything," Five returned. "I'm sure you'd rather give it to Six anyway, because she's… well, you know."

Three shrugged. "I'll get her one if she asks, but she's probably used to some weird outer space bed anyway. Oh, excuse me, holo bed."

Five was about this close to chuckling, but decided that laughing at a joke made by someone like Three might say something bad about her, so didn't. (Maybe that was an irrational decision, but she was past caring at this point and wanted to play it safe, and honestly, by the time she could decide whether or not she could laugh about this, the joke would have worn itself out anyway.) "Fair enough," was all she said instead.

And she had to admit, an actual bedframe (provided that was all it was) would be nice to have. The alternative, after all, was sleeping on the floor again. Which wasn't really something she was thrilled about having to do.

Three didn't say anything else, but bent down and picked up two pieces of lumber and set to work again, starting up the electric drill again, with that high-pitched whining noise that Candace Five hated.

For another minute or two she leaned against the door jamb and watched Three. Even she had to admit that… well, it was weird. That was all she had to admit, all she was willing to admit - even to herself. Nothing more had to happen. Imagining herself doing the same things that Phineas and Ferb had once done? A childhood wherein she wasn't the shunned outcast incapable of anything meaningful in light of their - what they'd done?

No, it wasn't appropriate. That was reckless and foolish and she would not consider it at all, not for even a moment. Her brothers had left that behind for good reason. To entertain such thoughts would be to bring shame to herself.

Just, then, Three's electric drill slipped from her hand and this time around, she wasn't so lucky. She let out a yelp and stumbled backwards with her foot in her hand, landing on top of the bed she'd just finished. "Owwwwww," she moaned. "That hurt ."

"Sorry," Five offered, cringing slightly. But inside, somehow, she felt better. Because, as she'd always been when it came to matters like this, she was right. These things were dangerous. And Three was unfortunate enough to be forced to endure it for the rest of her life. It sucked for her, but Five was happy. Her life was good. Perhaps not perfect, no, but what was?

And so soon as she got home, she would be back. Back in her life, surrounded by normal people. Normal people with normal lives - including her own brothers, brothers who had seen the light and realized the error of their ways. It was definitely something that made her thankful that they'd had a chance to do so - a chance that she now knew was not a guaranteed thing to receive.

She yawned and stood up straight, leaving Three's room behind in favor of her own again. Well, that stupid electric drill noise was still going to be bothering her, but she could deal. Three wasn't half so unpleasant as she'd seemed at first - much the same as Four, really. Although at least Four wasn't quite so out there as Three.

…and no, she was not about to fall into that trap again. Not by a long shot. There was a divide between her and Four, a divide that could not have been greater if it had tried. And there was nothing that anyone could do about that, especially not someone like Three. Psssh. The very idea was ridiculous.

And honestly? It wasn't such a big deal. So what if Three could - could build roller coasters or whatnot. Because Five knew the suffering that sort of thing caused, and she knew that her life was better for the lack of it.

No, her life had its fair share of pitfalls and shortcomings. But did that matter at the end of the day? At the end of the day, when Three had to go bed knowing that she was just a hairsbreadth from insanity if she didn't constantly put herself in danger of life and limb, when Four had no one to go home to but her brother , when Seven had no one at all because she claimed to hate them all - when all of that was going down, Five would be home again, in her own house, with her loving husband and happy family.

Yes, perhaps she'd been looking at this the wrong way. Because if Candace Five really thought about it, she was the lucky one. Heck, maybe she should be pitying her other selves, even. Because who was it that had managed to persevere through countless obstacles to maintain a healthy relationship with the love of her life without having to turn to incest or psychosis or whatever had happened to her other selves?

That's right, she did.

And so she really shouldn't be annoyed at the sound of the electric drill coming from the next room, should she? Because it was reminder, not of the bad, but of the good. That she had managed to keep a normal life, that she'd managed to save her brothers from traveling down that path as well. And even despite all the various obstacles that had constantly cropped up into her path to prevent that, still she'd succeeded.

And she'd succeeded in the right way, with Jeremy , not her brother, not with the help of recklessly knocking away the foundational pillars of the universe, not with any of that.

Huh. It was an interesting train of thought for sure. One that, even in the decidedly unpleasant surroundings she was in, and the horrendous storm pounding down outside, served to lighten her heart and lift her spirits.

The struggle wasn't over - it would probably never be. But that was alright, because it was normal. And after all, wasn't that who she was?

Candace Five smiled slightly to herself as she sat down on the mattress on the office floor, listening once more to the sound of the electric drill.

But this time? It… didn't bother her.


	37. Ground Zero

All was still on the ninth floor of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. Not a creature was stirring, not even one of the seven different spatiotemporal duplicates of the Candace who belonged here - Candace Four - and everything was very, very quiet. Isabella Four alone was still awake, sitting secluded in the basement, wrapped in a blanket under the cover of darkness, with her feet propped up on the table, poking around on the Internet during her midnight vigil in lieu of Candace Two, who was still fast asleep nearby.

The vicious thunderstorm had weakened with time, the dense masses of clouds becoming ragged and patchy, tearing gaps through which gleamed pale moonlight, shining down softly amidst the drizzling rain still pattering down over the sleeping city, running down in the sides of buildings in countless rivulets, puddling in the streets, collecting in oceanic puddles in the grass.

It was, by most accounts, a relatively peaceful night.

The drumming on the raindrops on the roof of the Flynn home made for a relaxing ambience, and that was an ambience that Candace Four could not have been more thankful for. Well, perhaps she could have been, had she stayed awake to express her gratitude to the weather, so unpleasant and threatening during the day, but so welcome during the night. As it was, however, she never really gave herself that chance.

Upon returning home from Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, she'd cleaned up the house a bit (which was really starting to fall a bit into a shambles after so many days solely in the care of her children), told them a bit more about what she knew of the goings-on of that day, mindlessly watched a rerun of Let's All Dance Until We're Sick that happened to be showing, and soon retired. It was late, after all.

Phineas wasn't home when she went to bed - something to do with Two and Isabella and a bunch of stuff that Four really couldn't bring herself to care much about. All she knew for sure was that, for one reason or another, when she pulled the covers up over her head, that upstairs bedroom was empty with the sole exception of herself. And of course it was. After all, Xavier and Amanda were way past the age that the rumbles of thunder or flashes of lightning overhead would send them running to her for comfort. Perry was sleeping in his basket, and everyone was content.

And for all the craziness that had ensued over the past handful of days, when she closed her eyes that night, she was content too. And she counted sheep and listened to the rain overhead, and sleep followed closely behind.

At least for a little while.

Candace Four's eyes suddenly snapped open. Silence reigned all around in the pitch-dark room - apparently the rain had finally given out in the night. She blinked, suddenly very sure, somehow, that she was not alone the bedroom. Which only left one possibility.

"Phineas?"

She pulled herself up to a sitting position, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. The clock on the nightstand declared it to be a quarter-to-three in the morning. It was late (well, early, but whatever) for her brother to be back, but better late than never and all that.

Still, even as the familiar objects around her came into halting focus, she somehow felt that of the people it could be, this was not her brother. Who would it be, then? One of the kids? Candace Two here to pester her about Doofengung? Candace-

"I voted for you, you know."

And at that deep, almost baritone voice, the blood in Four's veins turned to sludge and all her hair stood on end. She caught a whiff of the distinctive scent of some sort of strong tea wafting through the air, and it felt like her entire brain had seized up. No, no - it couldn't be. Not after so long…

"I voted for you - but this is much stranger." The zebra planted his picket sign into the carpeted bedroom floor and leaned into it, taking a sip of his drink. "And I have to say, I'm rather glad I was still able to find you this way."

"No, no, no, no," Four stammered, suddenly feeling like a helpless child again, cowering before the loquacious animal. "What - what are you doing? Go away! Please!" She - she couldn't deal with this. Not now. Not ever. Please, please, please.

The zebra stared at her, frowning. Well, frowning as well as a zebra could, which wasn't very. Still, he (she? it?) got the point across frighteningly well. Zebras shouldn't even be scary, not compared to everything else she'd seen, but this particular zebra had haunted her for so long that the facts of what he could or couldn't do no longer mattered. He was here, and that was all her nerves needed to go haywire.

"I must say I imagined that you would be much more receptive to my presence than this, Kevin."

"R-receptive?" Four stammered. "Why would you think-" Suddenly, something in her brain just… clicked, just like that. "Wait a second - what did you just say?" Kevin. Like always. He'd called her 'Kevin'. A name that wasn't hers - couldn't possibly be, because it was a man's name.

...unless, say, out there in the multiverse, there was a dimension in which names were genderswapped. A dimension in which she'd become the mayor. A dimension in talking animals were the norm, to the point that eating meat or dairy was unheard of.

Kevin.

"Kevin?" the zebra repeated. "I would think you would know your own name, Kevin. I did vote for you, after all."

"No!" Four exclaimed, but this time not quite so much out of fear. "No - no you did not vote for me! My name is not Kevin and I am not who you think I am!"

For the first time in her life, Four thought the zebra looked… surprised. Taken aback, even. He blinked once, slowly and took another long sip from his teacup.

"I'm sorry, Kevin? I'm afraid I-"

"I am not Kevin!" Four leapt up out of bed, carelessly tossing aside the bedding onto the floor. Though the zebra was still taller than her (as he would be, being a zebra, and all), at least this way the difference wasn't quite so marked as when she'd been sitting on the bed. "You want Kevin? You want her? Just march your furry self out of my house to the company building, and there you'll find her. Ninth floor. Kevin. Not Candace - that's me - but the actual Kevin. The one you voted for. Your mayor. Who, I repeat, is not me. Not."

"Is that so?"

"Is that - is that so?" Candace spluttered. "Yes, yes it's so! I'm not - you didn't vote for me! I've never run for an office in my life. My name is not Kevin, and I do not know you!" She gestured wildly about the room. "Does this look like Kevin's house? What about my children? I know Kevin doesn't have any - she told me so! Did that never occur to you?"

"Children?"

"Yes, children - do you not believe me? Do you want to go downstairs and wake them? I can do that. I can so do that." She stopped and sucked in a breath, trying to still her heartbeat, which felt as if it was about to explode through her chest any second now.

"No, I don't believe all that will be necessary," the zebra said slowly. "You are not Kevin, then?"

"No, no, no," Four replied softly, collapsing back into a sitting position on her bed. "Kevin's at the building. I'm not her, I swear." She looked up the zebra, as he flicked his tail back and forth in that way he did whenever she saw him. "Do you want me to take you there? I can - we can drive there right now. She's there, I promise."

"There's no need for that either," he returned. "My interdimensional holographic projection device enables me travel freely wherever I wish to here. If you would be so kind as to point me in the right direction, I will be off directly."

Directions? She could get him directions. She could do that. Candace turned, half in a daze, and whacked her nightlamp (kind of harder than she intended to - ouch) turning it on. The dim light softly illuminated only one half of the room, but it was all she needed really.

The sight of the zebra in the light was enough to send shivers up and her spine, even as she fought with her nightstand drawer. It finally jerked open, and she snatched out the pocket-sized collapsible Danville roadmap within. She didn't know why Phineas insisted on keeping around a roadmap in this day and age, much less why he kept it in her drawer, but it sure came in handy now. Her fingers were shaking a little as she unfolded it, but she wasn't about to let that stop her. Not by a long shot.

She pointed at the spot on the map, almost in the center of Danville, directly across the street from the theater. "There. That's where she is."

"Hmm." The zebra tapped his… his chin? with one black hoof thoughtfully, leaning in to view the map more closely. It was all Four could do to not cringe away. "I see. I suppose I shall be off, then. Thank you very kindly for your assistance, at any rate."

"Yeah - yeah. Don't mention it," she mumbled, shoving the map towards him. "Here - take it. You need it? Take it."

"Oh, no, I can't do that, I'm afraid," he replied, softly chuckling in his deep voice. "Holographic projections, remember? But thank you for your generosity - I appreciate it very much." He stopped for a moment and cleared his throat. "As you might imagine, this is a… rather embarrassing realization for me. I'm dreadfully sorry to have bothered you at such an early hour..." His voice trailed away awkwardly, as if he was waiting for something.

"Candace," she supplied dully, still hardly able to force herself to meet his eyes. "Like I said, don't mention it."

"Candace, then. A pleasant enough name, if a bit… masculine." He shrugged. "But who am I to judge? I'm Theodora. It's been a pleasure."

"Yeah, sure." Candace looked down at her bare feet for a second, trying to will herself to be calmer in the face of her long-time tormentor. She looked up again, clearing her throat. "I-"

But the zebra was gone.

Once again, Candace Four was alone.

She rolled her eyes and sighed exaggeratedly in exasperation, collapsing flat onto her bed and staring aimlessly at the ceiling. What even - what was - what had just happened? Not something she wanted to be thinking of long, that was for absolute sure. She turned the nightlamp off again, (touching it more softly this time) and retrieved the bedcovers from the floor, pulling them back overtop of herself.

Another shudder ran up her spine as she lay there, trying to squeeze the images out of her mind. He wouldn't come back, right? She'd directed him to Kevin - the actual Kevin - so that would be the end of it, right? Surely. Surely - it had to be, just had to.

Ugh. This would have been so much easier had Phineas been here. He would have known what to say - how to handle this - and what to do now that it was over, and the zebra gone again. (Hopefully for good, right? Oh, she so desperately hoped it was for good.) Stupid Candace Two and whatever she'd said or done or whatever that'd made him decide to stay at the company building again overnight. (It was her fault, right? It had to be - she was the always the one doing this sort of stupid stuff.)

She lay there, still, for a minute or two, listening to the silence of the room around her, broken only by the muted humming of the air conditioner unit.

What a way to interrupt a night - a night that had otherwise been so peaceful. At least it was over now, right? It should be - it had to be. Surely.

Honestly, she probably should have seen this coming eventually. It was probably pretty much straight-up guaranteed what with Kevin being here and all. Well, the zebra knew Kevin. And Kevin probably knew the zebra. And Kevin herself was… pleasant enough, if a bit weird.

So the zebra, by extension, had to be at least somewhat pleasant too?

Yeah, no, that wasn't working.

Perhaps the better way of approaching this was just… not to think about it. Yes. She would do that instead. Just scrunch down deeper under the covers and empty her mind of all thoughts of anything related to… what had just happened.

Which was how she had to think about it, right, because she didn't know what had just happened, because her mind was empty of all thought of it!

Yeah, no, that wasn't working either.

Candace Four sighed and tossed about in the bed, staring up the roof. This was going to be a long rest-of-the-night.

* * *

This was going way too easily.

From the moment that Candace Seven had realized that more than revenge, more than justice, she wanted to get away from her once-brothers and to never come back, she had started plotting. Like the last times, she'd have to start from scratch, as there was nothing in this building that was really hers – she supposed she could take some stuff that was lying around and looked like it could be useful, but she was hardly going to touch something that Phineas and Ferb had built. She'd made that mistake far too many times in the past, and always with near-lethal results as elaborate torture devices pulled her limbs apart while her brothers stood by and watched. Never again.

One thing she did take advantage of was the buffet, as she decided that she would stock up in advance for her journey into the wilderness, even if it meant having to suffer the expense of running into those arrogant phony siblings yet again. Thankfully, that interaction had been mercifully short – Phineas had been standing at the buffet table, but he had looked distinctly uncomfortable once she'd shown up and looked the other way the whole time. Maybe he was at last beginning to realize that she wouldn't be trapped in his plans as easy as her counterparts were.

The thought of those other Candaces inflamed her with anger every time. Because even if they were brainwashed into this, there was still a part of them that had given in to Phineas' twisted desires voluntarily, a part that had taken the first step into the water before he'd dragged them down into the depths of the ocean. That step was one that Candace Three – the woman who'd spent the first fifteen years of her life being her – had obviously made, and one that Five was currently making despite all the effort she'd put into getting some sense into the woman.

Seven supposed that it wasn't very rational to blame her other selves for making the mistake that she herself had made many times back in the day, not realizing just how twisted her brothers' twisted minds were until the day Phineas had erased her from history for the chance to have his way with Three. But she didn't care. Rational or not, it was still incredibly frustrating to see their blindness, at an age way beyond when they should have figured it out. Whether they were those boys' unwilling or willing play toys, Candace Seven could no longer be bothered to make any chance at saving them. She'd tried that with Five, and look at what had happened. From now on, she was looking out for herself alone.

There was something refreshing about the decision to get away from the people who had ruined her life and never see them again. It was one she'd made before, of course, but not with the same kind of determination and commitment that she was feeling for it now. The fact that she was actually doing this, packing up as much food as she could take with her so that she'd actually go out there and leave tonight… it almost made her feel a little better. Hopeful. It was certainly a welcome change from the absolute emptiness she'd been in since screaming at Phineas once more that morning.

But that hope was reason enough to worry. Because nice things just didn't happen to her, and every hope would be squashed sooner or later. And wouldn't it be just like her brothers – brothers who undoubtedly had cameras installed so that they would be able to monitor every inch of the building – to let her have that hope of getting away from them for a couple of minutes, only to brutally squash it immediately thereafter? Candace might hate them and hold their occasional foolishness in contempt, but she was not about to underestimate them. She knew she would end up paying a heavy price for that. Phineas and Ferb were thirty-three and thirty-four by now, after all – old enough to have perfected the art of breaking a person.

And that was why she could never let go of the fear that this was too easy. She couldn't… she shouldn't let herself feel that hope, even when she tried so hard to get out of that stupid building. Not when she sneaked a towel out of a bathroom to tie her food into (after soaking it in water to make sure it was clean and then letting it dry again, of course – she wasn't an idiot), not when she had watched out of the ninth floor window to see Candace Four leave, and then later; her brothers, and not when she'd checked pretty much every room to ensure no one was awake to see her leave, and she had subsequently sneaked down the stairs. Around every corner, she'd half-expected to find out that the Phineas she had seen leaving the building was a clone and that he was popping up here to squash her dreams and keep her confined in this prison. Her heart was pounding as she got to the ground floor and glanced down the stairs into the basement to make sure that Two was gone. It was a welcome relief – although she loathed the thought of what Phineas might be doing to her over at his house, Seven knew that she'd rather have it happen to Two than to herself. (Candace Two deserved it, at any rate.) At least with two Candaces to use for his fantasies Phineas was likely to be distracted for a while, and at least with Two's absence, Seven didn't have to put up with her endless whining about Doofen-something. The woman was clearly paranoid.

It took Seven only a few seconds to cross the parlor past Phineas' secretary's desk (the one who local Phineas had somehow gotten to fawn over him too, because even multiple versions of his sister just hadn't been enough for him) and get outside, but it felt like it had been hours. When the cold wind blew into her face, she could barely believe it. She had pulled it off. She was actually free.

This was, of course, no time for complacency. A quick check of her watch told her that it was a few minutes past midnight, and she was still smack in the middle of Danville. If her non-brothers were still the early risers they'd always been (she hadn't exactly been paying attention over the past days) they would likely be here at seven or eight in the morning. That meant that her time to escape – assuming that she was escaping, and this wasn't simply a more elaborate trap than she'd anticipated for – was limited.

So, where to? The first thought in Candace's mind had been to go back to Brockton, but by now she had dismissed that. She didn't think she had mentioned her current home town to Five, but she couldn't be sure, and if she had the other woman would undoubtedly spill the beans to Phineas now that she had abandoned the common sense she'd displayed over the past days in order to suck up to her brothers. And even if she hadn't outright said it to anyone, the fact that local Phineas had managed to tamper with minds in a way that had trapped Five in Four's body last year meant that even her thoughts might not have been safe in this building. No, it was better to take an entirely different approach. Brockton might not even exist in this world anyway. It had been her one safe harbor, her one refuge from Phineas and Ferb. Obviously it would cease to exist sooner or later.

And what did that leave her with? She supposed that she could go somewhere else within the Tri-State Area, but even in Jefferson County or Adjacent, she would probably be found sooner or later. No, the ideas that she'd had the previous times had been on the right track. She needed to get out of the state, possibly out of the country altogether. Maybe she could move to a big city, like New York or Los Angeles? No, moving into an urban area would only make it easier for her brothers to find her. It was probably better to move into a small, rural community. Some place where she could fly below the radar. Let those nitwits try to find her there.

Although Seven hadn't really been able to take anything with her aside from a backpack she'd found and the clothes on her back, she did have the wallet on her that she'd been carrying since the day she vanished, filled with just enough cash to get her out of Danville. All she needed to do was find her way back to that bus station, which, frankly, wasn't too hard to do. She got to the main street in front of Phineas and Ferb's obnoxious building and, in a rare moment of luck, it turned out that a bus was due in within the next five minutes. And sure enough, after a waiting period that felt like it was much longer than that, a bus showed up. Candace managed to smile to the driver – anyone who was going to take her away from this hellhole could count on her sympathies – and after thoroughly checking the bus to make sure Phineas wasn't going to pop up from behind a chair, she finally sat down.

It occurred to her as she glanced over her shoulder at the rapidly shrinking sights of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated that today had been the last time she would ever see her brothers. It was hard to believe even now that she could be free of them permanently, and she had berated herself for holding onto that hope earlier, but… she needed hope. If she couldn't believe that this had a chance of working, there was no point in going out there. If Phineas and Ferb would track her down…

She shuddered. No. She was not going to think about that. She needed to believe – needed to hope – needed to trust that she would never have to see her children's murderer again.

Her children…

Candace's thumb pressed down on the wallet in her hand, and for a moment she was able to pretend that the shiver she was feeling was a hiccup. But it wasn't, and the brief glance of Amanda's picture that she was unable to refrain from taking confirmed it. She'd finally done something she'd been trying to refrain from doing from over a year now and acknowledged what had happened, and like with so many other things this acknowledgement was his fault. But did it even matter anymore that he'd added one more sin to his endless tally?

Her children – plucky Amanda, cheerful Xavier, laid-back Fred – were gone.

Dead.

She would never, ever see them again. She would never again be able to look out on the backyard and see Xavier and Fred lean against the digital tree, she would never be able to play Skiddley Whiffers and enjoy Amanda beating her as much as she enjoyed beating her daughter. Because that grin on her daughter's face, that sense of happiness and joy she felt from leaning against Jeremy and watching her children have fun, that was worth more to her than anything in the world. And now… she would never be able to experience it again.

Parents weren't meant to outlive their children. It was unnatural. And like with everything unnatural in life, the same two people were at fault for all of it.

Candace held no illusions about how her once-brothers had thought about her – not anymore. But to think that they would stoop so low as to kill their own niece and nephews? She had seen Phineas and Ferb hang out with them so many times, she had seen the smile on Amanda's face even the last time Uncle Phineas and Aunt Isabella had paid them a visit, which was either a couple of weeks or a couple of months before their erasure. Had Phineas been thinking of his designs upon his sister even then? Had he been asking her some tentative questions in the direction of incest – an implication she had of course missed due to her naivety about his intentions – and when he realized that she would never consent to it, had he plotted out her children's deaths even while playing catch with them in Candace and Jeremy's backyard?

Earlier on, the realization that she hated him had felt new and strange. Right now, it felt like a welcome friend. She did hate Phineas. She despised him.

For a moment, that mental clarity was able to relieve the depression she felt in her brain. But as she glanced down at the picture she was holding, Candace felt her focus slip away. It wasn't the best picture of her daughter in existence – oh wait, it was – but it was still Amanda, recognizably smiling into the camera.

Her oldest child.

And she'd never see her again.

Candace Seven had cried plenty of times in her life, but all that had abruptly dried up since the moment her brothers had ruined her life. From then on, she had absolutely refused to cry. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing how broken she was. She knew they'd relish in it like they relished in everything going wrong in her life. But now…

Now she wasn't crying over what they had done to her. No, she was crying over the loss of her children. Three smiling, happy, loving faces that didn't even have a tombstone to their names. Three bright, spirited people who were worth crying for.

And thus for the first time in almost two years, Candace Flynn allowed her tears to flow.

It took the bus about ten to fifteen minutes to arrive at the central station she'd first arrived on when they got to this dimension, which was… three days ago now? It sure felt like an eternity. For a moment, it was entirely too tempting to believe that she could just retrace her path all the way and go back into the non-dimension, only to go home from there. But that wasn't possible and she knew it. No, her best bet was to use the last money she had on her to get away from here.

The guy behind the desk at the station was the exact same man she'd met three days ago. Like last time, he looked entirely disinterested in anything going on around him, and even her question about a bus that would take her as far away from here as possible yielded nothing more than a frown as he slowly began to describe all her options. It was probably better than if he'd started questioning her about where she wanted to go and why. Candace supposed that facing this kind of attendant was one of those blessings she'd been so fortunate to have in life, just like other great things such as 'not bleeding to death on the floor', or 'not being forced into sex with my brother yet'.

It took her only two or three minutes before she got the tickets for a place which was, or so she was guaranteed, as far away as she could possibly go from here. That was also just about the only thing she could squeeze out of the attendant. Apparently her destination was Fairfax, an ambiguous place name that didn't even tell her what state she was going to, or whether it was a small or a large city. Well, given the fact that it was the end of a bus line all the way from Danville, it was probably not going to be that small. She realized that pressing for any more details was pointless when the attendant started snoring.

At least she was leaving. That was the most important thing. Candace figured that that might be another small ray of sunshine in her utterly miserable life – that she had wisely held back her wallet the last time this discussion came up so that Candace Four had been the one to pay for her transportation to the local Flynn home. Although 'not paying for a forced bus ride to the home of your nightmares' was also one of those fake reliefs that only threw into contrast how abhorrent her life had become.

She boarded the bus in a daze, once more sitting down near the end – not that there were many other passengers at this hour anyway. It was one of those self-driving buses, of whom she'd seen a couple emerging in her home dimension as well before she had been snatched out of her normal life. From what she'd seen thus far, they were increasingly common around here. In her old life, Candace might have been a little unnerved. Right now, she paid little to no attention. Being on a bus going fifty miles per hour without anyone at the wheel? Like that was any different to her ordinary life.

The other people on the bus were still a little unnerved, though, particularly the elderly couple that had taken their seats a couple of rows before hers. They became even more unnerved as they watched Candace hiccup, but a firm glare managed to get them to concentrate on… well, whatever elderly people would be doing in a bus ride ordinarily. Sleeping, probably, and looking outside. Seven felt no sympathy for them – the only thing she would want right now was to have Two's sunglasses so that she could have looked even more intimidating. Nobody had any right to stare at her. It wasn't like she'd chosen this life. If she had the choice, she would have jumped at the chance of being normal in a heartbeat.

It had been a great life. Everything she'd ever wished for. Jeremy as her husband, Amanda, Xavier and the happy surprise that Fred had represented as her kids… but thinking about them right now was only going to reduce her to tears again. But even outside that, her life had been happy: she had her parents, and… and…

…and her brothers.

A sense of shame filled Candace's heart. How could she have been so blind for so long? Yes, she had done everything that was possible to bust her brothers, and she'd even done so while unbeknownst to her her own family had been on the verge of erasure, but deep down, she knew she hadn't been much better than Candace Five. She had gotten along with Phineas and Ferb. The reasons they had been able to plot out those sinister plans at her and her children's birthday parties was because she had invited them, not every time of course, but more than once. If only she had been willing to see… if only she hadn't let family sentiment cloud her judgment… she could have protected her children, they could have been safe, alive, happy…

Tears entered her eyes once more – it kind of felt like this was becoming a pattern after she had first given in half an hour ago – and Candace snapped her eyes shut rapidly, willing them away. Somehow hiccupping seemed to help with that, too. She… she knew she wasn't to blame. Phineas and Ferb had done this, and she was not at fault for her incapacity to realize how evil they were. Maybe she should have known, maybe she could have known, but none of that changed the fact that Phineas and Ferb were the monsters here. If it hadn't been for them, Xavier, Fred and Amanda would still be alive.

It was coming for Five now too, she supposed. Five, the only other one who had children with someone other than a version of her brother. Candace supposed that she would have been able to understand Five's motivations for the actions she'd undertaken yesterday if it had been about giving in to Phineas now, so that he wouldn't see the need of going back in time and destroying her family then. She could even see and understand Five's initial naivety to understanding how evil her brothers truly were. But Five hadn't mentioned any of that when she had suddenly turned against Seven. All she had mentioned was that in her mind, her brothers were perfect and amazing. Which meant that every single thing she had said up until then, every time she'd expressed common sense and disgust regarding those worthless boys, had been a lie. Either that, or an attempt to show strength by a woman too pathetic to follow through.

Well, it was over now. Candace Five was not her… her friend. She had never been her friend. How could anyone be her friend when she didn't hate Phineas and Ferb – when she had caved so easily? And Seven refused to waste any thought on reminiscing about why Five had left, or whether she'd been deceiving her from the start or if she had started out well-meaning but naïve, but she'd simply caved in later on. She… she'd known she would lose Five sooner or later, the way she'd lost everything and everyone in her life, but Seven had never expected it to happen in this way. The more Five would see, the more anyone would see of Phineas and Ferb, the more convinced they should become of how sick and twisted they were, as long as they would simply open their minds to the possibility of those amazing boys not being so perfect as everyone proclaimed them to be. And Seven had opened Five's mind, she knew that. But Five… Five just hadn't listened.

Maybe she'd just been rotten from the start, as corrupted as all those other Candaces. It would be an uncomfortable thing to face because it would mean that Five had never truly been her companion, but Candace Seven was used to dealing with uncomfortable facts.

Her own brothers didn't care whether she lived or died. Fact.

She hated her younger brothers. Fact.

Candace Five was a traitor, and had been a traitor from the start. Fact.

They were all facts, and Candace Seven was not inclined to waste any more thoughts on them.

...but five hours is a long, long bus ride.

Maybe Five had been well-intentioned. And maybe the fact that she abandoned Seven was not something she'd been plotting for days but simply an unwillingness to accept reality, an escape into the comforts of her childhood. That didn't change anything about the fact that Five had stabbed her in the back and smacked that book against her head, no. But it did make a frightening amount of sense even to her own mind.

Because wasn't that life she'd lived, not just with Jeremy and the kids, but at her brothers' side, something she still longed for as well? No matter how much she hated her brothers, no matter how many times she'd fantasized about them meeting some kind of violent end or courtly punishments… there were still the dreams. The dreams she couldn't get rid of. The dreams she had at least every month, if not every other week, in which Phineas and Ferb weren't monsters. In those dreams, the façade of nice and helpful siblings that her brothers had presented to the world for almost forty years now was real.

It was escapism. Ultimately futile, and something that easily lent itself to the kind of delusions that Candace Five was suffering from. Phineas and Ferb were irresponsible, uncaring brats. Candace Seven knew that, and visualizing a world in which they weren't was pointless and counterproductive. She needed to stay focused on her hatred rather than long for an impossible world. Trying to achieve the impossible was something that Phineas and Ferb would do, and look how that usually ended for everyone else.

But her mind was stubborn, even after almost two years of a daily torture inflicted by Phineas and Ferb. Even after Phineas had murdered her children in order to commit incest with her, what she wanted more than a reality in which she could have their revenge (which was enough of a pipe dream in itself) or in which she would never have to see them again, was a reality in which none of that was necessary, because in that fantasy reality Five's dreams were right.

But… no. Candace glanced out of the window, watching the trees buzz past as they moved farther and farther away from Danville. She would not let Phineas and Ferb ruin this for her. She'd get out of here, safe and sound, and she would never allow those names to stain her mind again. From now on, she would be living the good life.

The bus ride dragged on and on, to the point where Candace did zone off at some point. Her dreams were chaotic and incoherent, but at least they didn't involve Phineas or Ferb in any way. They did, however, come to a sudden halt when she jolted awake. Confused, she looked around to see the bus had pulled into a garage of some sorts. That was unusual enough in itself, but stranger was the fact that it was now completely empty.

Candace walked to the front of the vehicle and managed to figure out how to open the automatic doors and get out. That didn't help her situation very much, though. She was still in a completely foreign environment. The room was dark, and the walls were only vaguely illuminated by moonlight that was shining in from somewhere. It was also completely silent, apart from the regular pitter-patter of the rain pouring down on the roof. She had, of course, noticed the bad weather earlier on the day and especially while sitting in the bus, but now that it was the only thing she was hearing it was getting unnerving.

This was Phineas and Ferb's work, wasn't it? It had to be. She… she knew that it could never be long until they would come after her, but she hadn't expected this. Had they hijacked into the bus? Candace knew she should never have trusted a bus without a human driver, and she especially shouldn't have fallen asleep while being in one (although she couldn't blame herself for craving rest after having gone so long being so stressed out due to her brothers' presence that she hadn't had a chance to sleep properly). Although come to think of it, she probably couldn't have jumped out anyway even if she had been awake. Phineas and Ferb would have simply amplified the speed of the vehicle, forcing herself to either jump to her death or stay put.

And wasn't that the story of her life? Wasn't that what had happened once again right now? Candace's lip quivered, and she tried to suppress the discomfort she felt but it was just so much harder now that she'd given into her tears over the issue surrounding her children. She was trapped. Trapped in a building only hours after escaping… and the truth was, she'd never even been free in the first place. How could she ever have expected to be able to run away from her brothers? They held all the cards, as they had from the moment they came into her life and promptly started ruining it. And she had never been able to resist it, or even get away from it. How could she, when she had never even been able to show her mother what was going on?

Candace was sure that even if she went to Lawrence and Linda Four for salvation now, they would be as blind to her sufferings as her mother had been when she was still a teenager. Considering that Phineas Four had been able to keep the fact that he was in an incestuous relationship (if such an unequal perversion could be called that) with his sister a secret for all these years, she had no doubt that he would continue to do so no matter what he did. Or maybe her parents did know, but they were too afraid to step up and do something about it? Maybe that had been the issue all along? Either way, she could expect no help from that direction. Or any direction. It was her against the people she had once obliviously called her brothers. And they had… they were…

The solitary candle of hope that was hidden deep inside her heart, beyond the darkness that had enclosed it for the past years, a candle that had burned hesitantly but yet strongly over the past hours, was flickering dangerously now.

Any moment now, Phineas and Ferb could show up and gloat at her. Any moment, her fate would be sealed. And she could do…

One of the walls of the garage caught Candace's eye. Although the wall was as dark as the rest of this building, taped on the wall was something that looked a little lighter. She supposed that it could be a map, like the one she'd seen hanging on the wall in the bus station back in Danville, the one Four had spotted three days ago and unleashed their misery with. (Well, that wasn't true. The misery in Candace's life had been there for years by that point.) It shouldn't contain anything unremarkable, but for some reason Candace felt herself compelled to walk over to it and check it out.

In the meantime, the candle stayed lit.


End file.
